Quote

This suspension of one's own reality, this being entirely alone in a strange city (at times I wondered if I had lost the power of speech) is an enriching state for a writer. Then the written word ... takes on an intensity of its own. Nothing gets exteriorized or dissipated all is concentrated within.

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
State
Writer
Concentrated
Times
Strange
Wondered
Lost
Cities
Intensity
Reality
Takes
Entirely
Power
Alone
Travel
States
Written
Speech
Dissipated
Nothing
Within
City
Enriching
Word
Gets
Suspension

More quotes by May Sarton

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instant intimacy was too often followed by disillusion.
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Failure would only be if you had somewhere stopped growing. As far as I can see the whole duty of the artist is to keep on growing.
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Poems like to have a destination for their flight. They are homing pigeons.
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I suppose real old age begins when one looks backward rather than forward
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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.
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I’m only able to write poetry, for the most part, when I have a Muse, a woman who focuses the world for me.
May Sarton
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The gift turned inward, unable to be given, becomes a heavy burden, even sometimes a kind of poison. It is as though the flow of life were backed up.
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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.
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Go rich in poverty. Go rich in poetry. This nothingness is plentitude.
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I suppose one has to remember that 'life' is important too, though it's something I forget in some moods, everything except work seeming like an interruption or really non-life.
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One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.
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Gardening is an instrument of grace.
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There was such a thing as women's work and it consisted chiefly, Hilary sometimes thought, in being able to stand constant interruption and keep your temper. . . .
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The most valuable thing we can do for the psyche, occasionally, is to let it rest, wander, live in the changing light of room, not try to be or do anything whatever.
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Joy, happiness ... we do not question. They are beyond question, maybe. A matter of being. But pain forces us to think, and to make connections ... to discover what has been happening to cause it. And, curiously enough, pain draws us to other human beings in a significant way, whereas joy or happiness to some extent, isolates.
May Sarton
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What we have not has made us what we are. / ... / What we are not drives us to consummation.
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I am not ready to die, / But I am learning to trust death / As I have trusted life.
May Sarton
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The value of solitude - one of its values - is, of course, that there is nothing to cushion against attacks from within, just as there is nothing to help balance at times of particular stress or depression.
May Sarton
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Old age is not an illness, it is a timeless ascent. As power diminishes, we grow toward the light.
May Sarton
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True gardeners cannot bear a glove Between the sure touch and the tender root.
May Sarton