May Sarton Quotes

I felt like a failure for so long because I wasn't able to access myself in the way I knew I would have if I was going to make music that mattered. I knew I was going to have to learn how to be honest.

A poem is the perfect place to celebrate imperfection and exult in the ways you fall short of being the person you want to be.

A writer, or a beginning writer, is faced by the huge walls of self-consciousness. Most people think, "What if I say the wrong thing? What if I don't sound erudite and sophisticated? I'll be considered a fool." In time, with a lot of practice, you realize that's your foolishness is your gift.

All the things that are negative in me as a person - the incompetence and despair and weakness and pain - are like a gift from God in a performer. If you don't hide them and if you stop lying to yourself about what you are and are not, there is a ring or a tent or a stage where you can take them and use them to make something beautiful.

Identity would seem to be the garment with which one covers the nakedness of the self: in which case, it is best that the garment be loose, a little like the robes of the desert, through which one's nakedness can always be felt, and, sometimes, discerned. This trust in one's nakedness is all that gives one the power to change one's robes.

Interestingly, I matured as a musician and as an artist before I matured as a man. What I mean by that is, I was ready to be completely vulnerable and honest with myself and unapologetic when it comes to how I express myself in my medium. But I wasn't as secure in doing that when it came to just being myself.

I love 'I'm British But...' It's such a sweet, innocent, open-hearted film, and it has the sort of openness that I still aspire to with everything I do. It wears its heart, head, everything on its sleeve.

When you're hiding behind a character all the time, as soon as you have to be yourself, you feel kind of terrified.

It took awhile for me to get used to speaking candidly about my own life. I got into it, and it turned out to be a wonderful experience.

Once I wrote 'Atmosphere,' I thought, 'This is my story; it's me and my life and what I've gone through to get to where I am.' I'm not the best singer, but still. All of my albums are personal, but putting myself out there and singing is one more thing that makes me vulnerable - one more thing that people can fire shots at.

I found that the more truthful and vulnerable I was, the more empowering it was for me.

The songs come from a vulnerable place, but expressing that part of yourself can also make you feel fearless.

I didn't start to work until I realized what it was I had to offer. I stopped imitating performers I admired and started just being myself.

If you have to change something about you to be in a part, I don't think it's easy to do. You should just pick the part where you can just be yourself.

I want to continue to be me and share with people.

I'm still very much Kate.

We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are.

I think I'm a bit less inhibited, and not thinking too much before speaking. It's not about being shameful, I'm just a bit more unabashedly myself because of this thing, and it probably started at age 15. I can be around people and say what I think without fear.

I always felt like if I lived in true authentic self-expression and lived in service and in support of many other people, I would be exempt from having to deal with yet another crisis in my life. I was wrong.

There's just a lot of stuff that really moves me, and I don't know how to express it, and I just want to try to do the best I can and surround myself with good people who don't invalidate me.

Our pain is a part of who we authentically are.

I've always been slightly afraid of coming out with my record because it's so personal to me. Now it doesn't feel as frightening as I thought it would.

My interviewing style and my approach to things is that, yes, it's okay to be sincere; it's okay to be yourself; it's okay to be real.

On the first album I was saying, that's just one part of me. And then I was thinking, well, am I going to hide the rest of me now just because I'm afraid of something? No. I'm just going to be myself.

Sometimes I feel like I used to be a person that liked to express himself a lot and put my feelings out there.