May Sarton Quotes

Children are like men, the experience of others does not help them.

Though we may be learned by another's knowledge, we can never be wise but by our own experience.

Humans hardly ever learn from the experience of others. They learn - when they do, which isn't often - on their own, the hard way.

No man's knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

People are people, and they want to know about their own experiences.

There's nothing particularly unique about my experiences except that they're my experiences.

I write from my life, my experience. I'm selfish that way.

A novel can enlarge the empathy and imagination of both its author and its reader, and my experience, that sense of enlargement is most intense when I'm transported beyond the narrow limits of my daily life.

You don't know why someone is in a certain circumstance and why they chose to be there. Sometimes it's just about having an experience and learning. I don't think you can begrudge someone that.

Ron allowed us to see right away the private piece of a person about to become very public. I suspect we're going to see more of her very private world - Laura's private experience. I'm not sure yet how public she's going to be about the actions she's going to have to take.

I just want to portray a very honest character that displays traits that people can truly relate to and can help them - the audience and myself because I learn from the characters as well - help them see themselves in a perspective that is outside of what they know already, and grow from that experience.

When I write a song, it comes from the heart and is based on a specific experience. You can't really say that one experience is greater than another, because all of your experiences take you through life on this journey.

I think that we're all, as human beings, so limited. If we want to write about ourselves, that's fairly easy. And if we write about our friends or our families, we can do that. But if we want to project ourselves somewhere beyond our personal experience, we're going to fail unless we get that experience or we borrow it from others.

Every time I think I know what's right and wrong, I end up being wrong. All I want to do is explore. I want to see what people would do. I say, 'What would this person do in this situation?' and I write it down. I'm not writing manifestos of my political views.

All I know is what I've lived through, so this is what I know.

Sometimes you have to experience things for yourself to learn the lessons that you need to learn.

I'm fascinated by people's process. Everyone's process is a little bit different, and just to see the different paths that people take to get where they are is really interesting to me.

One wants to be able to experience being other people, remaking a reality, remaking a life, remaking a certain world.

Be aware that you can truly help people only by aiding them to become what they are, not what you are. I have heard you say 'If I were you, I would do this, or that.' 'I' am never 'you'--and my solutions may not be yours.

I think there are two sides of the coin. On one hand, it can be challenging to access different parts of yourself, and you kind of have to put yourself back into reality when you're done with the job. But I think it's also really cool to have the ability to try on being different people and to explore some parts of yourself because you get to know yourself better. You get to know parts of yourself that you haven't met before. I think that's something that I've been learning more recently.

People ask me what my greatest strengths are and I say perspective. The best way to get that is to meet people that are polar opposites; you learn the most from them. There are pieces of you that are inherently yours, but everything else is a collection of the things you’ve seen and the people you’ve met.

there are some people who never learn; indeed, few people learn by experience, so far as I have ever seen.

It's a rare gift, to know where you need to be, before you've been to all the places you don't need to be.

Experience teaches us only one thing at a time - and hardly that, in my case.

Poems give you the lives of others and then circle in on your own inner world.