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A review by ms_tiahmarie
Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton
I borrowed this book and am rather sad I have to give it back. Thus, extra quotes to help me remember.
- I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my "real" life again at last. That is what is strange - that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. –
– Must art come from tension? –
– It is never a waste of time to be outdoors, and never a waste of time to life down and rest even for a couple of hours. It is then that images float up and then that I plan my work. –
– But the fact remains that, in marrying, the wife has suffered an earthquake and the husband has not. His goals have not radically changed; his mode of being has not been radically changed. –
– ...people in their thirties mourning their lost youth because we have given them no ethos that makes maturity appear an asset. –
– We have to make myths of our lives, the point being that if we do, then every grief or inexplicable seizure by weather, woe, or work can - if we discipline ourselves and think hard enough - be turned to account, be made to yield further insight into what it is to be alive, to be a human being, what the hazards are of a fairly usual, everyday kind. –
– All aspiring writers say these things: "I will not compromise and write a best seller!" - as if they could! There may be a few totally faked-up books that sell, but on the whole I believe every writer writes as well as he can. It takes a good storyteller to write a best seller, and a good craftsman. The professional will never brush the best seller aside as something he could do if he were willing to compromise. No, it is all a matter of kinds of perception, and of kinds of writing. –
– It is harder for women, perhaps, to be "one-pointed," much harder fro them to clear space around whatever it is they want to do beyond household chores and family life. Their lives are fragmented...this is the cry I get in so many letters – the cry not so much for "a room of one's own" as time of one's own. –
– It is only when we can believe that we are creating the soul that life has any meaning, but when we can believe it - and I do and always have - then there is nothing we do that is without meaning and nothing that we suffer that does not hold the seed of creation in it. –
- I am here alone for the first time in weeks, to take up my "real" life again at last. That is what is strange - that friends, even passionate love, are not my real life unless there is time alone in which to explore and to discover what is happening or has happened. –
– Must art come from tension? –
– It is never a waste of time to be outdoors, and never a waste of time to life down and rest even for a couple of hours. It is then that images float up and then that I plan my work. –
– But the fact remains that, in marrying, the wife has suffered an earthquake and the husband has not. His goals have not radically changed; his mode of being has not been radically changed. –
– ...people in their thirties mourning their lost youth because we have given them no ethos that makes maturity appear an asset. –
– We have to make myths of our lives, the point being that if we do, then every grief or inexplicable seizure by weather, woe, or work can - if we discipline ourselves and think hard enough - be turned to account, be made to yield further insight into what it is to be alive, to be a human being, what the hazards are of a fairly usual, everyday kind. –
– All aspiring writers say these things: "I will not compromise and write a best seller!" - as if they could! There may be a few totally faked-up books that sell, but on the whole I believe every writer writes as well as he can. It takes a good storyteller to write a best seller, and a good craftsman. The professional will never brush the best seller aside as something he could do if he were willing to compromise. No, it is all a matter of kinds of perception, and of kinds of writing. –
– It is harder for women, perhaps, to be "one-pointed," much harder fro them to clear space around whatever it is they want to do beyond household chores and family life. Their lives are fragmented...this is the cry I get in so many letters – the cry not so much for "a room of one's own" as time of one's own. –
– It is only when we can believe that we are creating the soul that life has any meaning, but when we can believe it - and I do and always have - then there is nothing we do that is without meaning and nothing that we suffer that does not hold the seed of creation in it. –