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One could go on revising a prose page forever whereas there is a point in a poem when one knows it is done forever.

May Sarton

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May Sarton
Age: 83 †
Born: 1912
Born: May 3
Died: 1995
Died: July 16
Diarist
Poet
Writer
May Eleanor Sarton
Pages
Forever
Point
Done
Revising
Prose
Whereas
Poem
Page

More quotes by May Sarton

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I feel happy to be keeping a journal again. I've missed it, missed naming things as they appear, missed the half hour when I push all duties aside and savor the experience of being alive in this beautiful place.
May Sarton
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[In old age] there is a childlike innocence, often, that has nothing to do with the childishness of senility. The moments become precious . . .
May Sarton
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Once more I realize that solitude is my element, and the reason is that extreme awareness of other people (all naturally solitary people must feel this) precludes awareness of one's self, so after a while the self no longer knows that it exists.
May Sarton
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About loving, I have little to learn from the young.
May Sarton
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I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward
May Sarton
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In a total work, the failures have their not unimportant place.
May Sarton
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Inside my mother's death / I lay and could not breathe.
May Sarton
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People who are always thinking of the feelings of others can be very destructive because they are hiding so much from themselves.
May Sarton
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You will always be here with me As long as I live, A towering figure of love.
May Sarton
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The poet must be free to love or hate as the spirit moves him, free to change, free to be a chameleon, free to be an enfant terrible. He must above all never worry about this effect on other people.
May Sarton
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I asked myself the question, 'What do you want of your life?' and I realized with a start of recognition and terror, 'Exactly what I have - but to be commensurate, to handle it all better.
May Sarton
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The only way through pain…is to absorb, probe, understand exactly what it is and what it means. To close the door on pain is to miss the chance for growth.
May Sarton
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Love is our human miracle.
May Sarton
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... the reason why there are so few first-class poets is that many people have intense feelings or first-class minds but to get the two together so that you will be willing to put a poem through sixty drafts, to be that self-critical, to keep breaking it down, that is what is rare. Right now most poetry is just self-indulgence.
May Sarton
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Why is it that people who cannot show feeling presume that that is a strength and not a weakness?
May Sarton
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The more our bodies fail us, the more naked and more demanding is the spirit, the more open and loving we can become if we are not afraid of what we are and of what we feel. I am not a phoenix yet, but here among the ashes, it may be that the pain is chiefly that of new wings trying to push through.
May Sarton
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One does not find oneself by pursuing one's self, but on the contrary by pursuing something else and learning through discipline or routine. . . who one is and wants to be.
May Sarton
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We have to believe that every person counts, counts as a creative force that can move mountains.
May Sarton
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Life comes in clusters, clusters of solitude, then a cluster when there is hardly time to breathe.
May Sarton
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Your poems will happen when no one is there.
May Sarton