May Sarton Quotes - Page 5

Do I think there's life after death? No, I think my books are my life after death.

Nobody stays special when they're old, Anna. That's what we have to learn.

I can tell you that solitude Is not all exaltation, inner space Where the soul breathes and work can be done. Solitude exposes the nerve, Raises up ghosts. The past, never at rest, flows through it.

have the courage to write whatever your dream is for yourself.

Light is snow sifted / To an abstraction.

The more articulate one is, the more dangerous words become.

A body without bones would be a limp impossible mess, so a day without steady routine would be disruptive and chaotic.

I simply adore being alone - I find it a consuming thirst - and when that thirst is slaked, then I am happy.

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.

In poetry compromise is fatal. In action of any cooperative sort it is inevitable. The thing is to find the balance.

“How does one grow up?” I asked a friend the other day. There was a slight pause; then she answered, “By thinking.”

we are never done with thinking about our parents, I suppose, and come to know them better long after they are dead than we ever did when they were alive.

It is sometimes the most fragile things that have the power to endure and become sources of strength.

And I refuse to feel guilty about not letter-writing either. There are times when one can, times when one can't. In the times when an enormous amount of living is going on, one can't.

Don't forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius. Think of the capacity to learn! The freshness, the temperament, the will of a baby a few months old!

Don't forget that compared to a grownup person every baby is a genius.

One of the springs of poetry is joy.

... 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.

The body is a universe in itself and must be held as sacred as anything in creation....It is dangerous to forget the body as sacramental.

We are able to laugh when we achieve detachment, if only for a moment.

I have written every poem, every novel, for the same purpose-to find out what I think, to know where I stand.

... love is healing, even rootless love.

There is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much.

over and over again I am struck by the wordiness of modern poetry, as if language had replaced experience and must be more and more extreme, intricate and in a way divorced from life itself. It seems as if what we all need is a great purification - but how will that come about?

I long for the bulbs to arrive, for the early autumn chores are melancholy, but the planting of bulbs is the work of hope and is always thrilling.