May Sarton Quotes

Do you often find yourself uttering the phrase, 'I feel like I should go?' You do not need to go. You are busy that night. You are busy every night, forever.

I have too many responsibilities and principles. There's no time for 'guilty' pleasures.

As a working mother, wife, daughter, and daughter-in-law, I have to make constant moral choices. Every choice I make results in someone else suffering.

I have a wife and a son and daughter. What do I need to do to make their lives better, happier? What can I do in terms of my time or my attention given that I am very busy at work? That's a personal rule of thumb I live by from the moment I get up to the moment I go to bed.

My friends ask me why I don't chill out and take things easy. I tell them that when I used to work 326 days a year, I never had time to do anything.

I never feel like I should have any time free.

As a mother, you're only allowed to talk about the 'good' moments - not the ones when you've had enough and want to be on your own. Or just want to be a woman, not a mother.

I see friends of mine who have kids and continue to do their art. It's deeply impressive. I can't even fit an Amazon return into the day. It's been sitting on my desk for two weeks.

When I was playing with the children, I felt I ought to be working, and when I was working, I felt I ought to be playing with the children.

I don't have time to be classified as difficult, and I don't have time to care.

Too often we women try to tackle chaos that is not ours to fix.

Letter writing is an excellent way of slowing down this lunatic helterskelter universe long enough to gather one’s thoughts

Someday I would love to write about Vincent van Gogh - his paintings and letters continue to inspire me very much. But it remains hard to find the time and inner rest to write.

Letter-writing on the part of a busy man or woman is the quintessence of generosity.

I've got better things to do than read rubbish about myself.

If I am constantly working, my relationships fail. So at least now I can have enough time to write a happy record. And be in love and be happy.

Every week we ought to have one hour for recieving letters, then go take a bath.

Don't you like to write letters? I do because it's such a swell way to keep from working and yet feel you've done something.

I see that I've become a really bad correspondent. It's not that I don't think of you. You come into my thoughts often. But when you do it appears to me that I owe you a particularly grand letter. And so you end in the "warehouse of good intentions": "Can't do it now." "Then put it on hold." This is one's strategy for coping with old age, and with death--because one can't die with so many obligations in storage. Our clever species, so fertile and resourceful in denying its weaknesses.

How wonderful it is to be able to write someone a letter! To feel like conveying your thoughts to a person, to sit at your desk and pick up a pen, to put your thoughts into words like this is truly marvelous.

It has long been a theory of mine and I am known, if I do say so, for my long theories that authors, generally speaking, are rotten letter writers.

It's a big issue for me - feeling like I should be helping every person who asks for something or who has a problem.

Ah, you're the one who wrote the letter. So you can write then.

I consider it a good rule for letter-writing to leave unmentioned what the recipient already knows, and instead tell him something new.

I don't read as much as I'd like. I've been writing a lot. I've been doing a lot of music, but I don't read as much as I should. I just don't.