May Sarton

What is there to do when people die - people so dear and rare - but bring them back by remembering?

True gardeners cannot bear a glove Between the sure touch and the tender root.

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.

Sometimes one has simply to endure a period of depression for what it may hold of illumination if one can live through it, attentive to what it exposes or demands.

It always comes back to the same necessity: go deep enough and there is a bedrock of truth, however hard.

Without darkness, nothing comes to birth, As without light, nothing flowers.

At some point I believe one has to stop holding back for fear of alienating some imaginary reader or real relative or friend, and come out with personal truth.

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.

If art is not to be life-enhancing, what is it to be? Half the world is feminine - why is there resentment at a female-oriented art? Nobody asks The Tale of Genji to be masculine! Women certainly learn a lot from books oriented toward a masculine world. Why is not the reverse also true? Or are men really so afraid of women's creativity?

One has only to set a loved human being against the fact that we are all in peril all the time to get back a sense of proportion. What does anything matter compared to the reality of love and its span, so brief at best, maintained against such odds?