May Sarton Quotes

For me, all the materials and objects I employ come from a specific space that's very personal.

I don't really approach a character as to whether or not it's good or bad. I just approach a character as to where it lives in me.

I try to spend a lot of time thinking of what it is I want to say, and how I want to say it. Mainly because I know what it's like as a fan to hear music that is just exactly what I needed.

If I watch 'Gone With the Wind,' I always find it interesting. I think, 'What's going to happen next? What's that character going to do?' But you know, you never really need to watch the films you made again. They stay inside you, always with you.

There's something different that happens when you're writing a song for your own record that you know you're going to sing.

I think my poems immediately come out of the sensuous and emotional experiences I have.

In one sense, every character you create will be yourself. You've never murdered, but your murderer's rage will be drawn from memories of your own extreme anger. Your love scenes will contain hints of your own past kisses and sweet moments.

I can't play anything until I find something that connects to my life, something I can carry as my secret map or code for the character.

As an artist myself, I know what it's like to put your heart and soul into something. You can feel the presence of another person.

Also, I knew that the impact of Motorcycle Diaries was going to be so resonant for all of us who went through the experience of making it that I didn't want to do anything that could reflect it.

I can't write music unless I'm deeply connected to it and that connection almost always comes from some experience that I have had or am having.

I guess I'm trying to write stuff that I, as a viewer, would connect to.

I honestly just hope to continue creating music that people can relate to and connect with in a personal way.

I don't choose the songs; the songs choose me.

Ultimately, I don't think you can be a character who's completely alien or divorced from your own personality. It's probably true of every writer - it's probably true of every filmmaker, every songwriter - that, ultimately, every character you create is a facet of yourself.

I want the poem to be an experience - for both the listener and for myself.

'Phase' is a special song to me, and I wanted the video to make you feel like you are on a journey with me. My team and I shot this video three different times, and every time I got it back, I wanted to go a step further.

Even when the poet seems most himself . . . he is never the bundle of accident and incoherence that sits down to breakfast; he has been reborn as an idea, something intended, complete.

For a man to become a poet (witness Petrarch and Dante), he must be in love, or miserable.

The great poet draws his creations only from out of his own reality.

The poet should seize the Particular, and he should, if there be anything sound in it, thus represent the Universal.

Sometimes I highjack memories. Sometimes I switch them around. Sometimes they're just in the background, like some little bass note. Those things have carried me through, especially when I first started writing. They're still there, but more in the distance these days.

I don't deal in technique. I deal in emotions.

The Poet makes himself a seer through a long, vast and painstaking derangement of all the senses

Nature, after all, is still the grand agent in making poets.