May Sarton

Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.

Pain can make a whole winter bright, like fever, force us to live deep and hard.

She became for me an island of light, fun, wisdom where I could run with my discoveries and torments and hopes at any time of day and find welcome.

Wrinkles here and there seem unimportant compared to the Gestalt of the whole person I have become in this past year.

Here life goes on, even and monotonous on the surface, full of lightning, of summits and of despair, in its depths. We have now arrived at a stage in life so rich in new perceptions that cannot be transmitted to those at another stage - one feels at the same time full of so much gentleness and so much despair - the enigma of this life grows, grows, drowns one and crushes one, then all of a sudden in a supreme moment of light one becomes aware of the sacred.

I think of the trees and how simply they let go, let fall the riches of a season, how without grief (it seems) they can let go and go deep into their roots for renewal and sleep.... Imitate the trees. Learn to lose in order to recover, and remember that nothing stays the same for long, not even pain, psychic pain. Sit it out. Let it all pass. Let it go.

I would like to believe when I die that I have given myself away like a tree that sows seed every spring and never counts the loss, because it is not loss, it is adding to future life. It is the tree's way of being. Strongly rooted perhaps, but spilling out its treasure on the wind.

There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.

In the middle of the night, things well up from the past that are not always cause for rejoicing--the unsolved, the painful encounters, the mistakes, the reasons for shame or woe. But all, good or bad, give me food for thought, food to grow on.

I feel like an inadequate machine, a machine that breaks down at crucial moments, grinds to a dreadful hault, 'won't go,' or, even worse, explodes in some innocent person's face.

No partner in a love relationship... should feel that he has to give up an essential part of himself to make it viable.

Help us to be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers.

Deep down there was understanding, not of the facts of our lives so much as of our essential natures.

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

May we agree that private life is irrelevant? Multiple, mixed, ambiguous at best - out of it we try to fashion the crystal clear, the singular, the absolute, and that is what is relevant; that is what matters.

Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.

Old age is not an illness, it is a timeless ascent. As power diminishes, we grow toward the light.

Solitude is the salt of personhood. It brings out the authentic flavor of every experience.

Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world, in feeling myself a part of it, even in a small way.

There is only one real deprivation... and that is not to be able to give one's gifts to those one loves most.

When we admit our vulnerability, we include others. If we deny it, we shut them out.