May Sarton

With the return of cheerfulness I feel a sense of loss. The poems no longer flow out. I am more "normal" again, no longer that fountain of tears and intense feeling that I have been for months. Balance is achieved, or nearly. But at what price? Now I must write letters and try to clear the desk . . .
-May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude (page 49)

Later on in the night I reached a quite different level of being. I was thinking about solitude, its supreme value. Here in Nelson I have been close to suicide more than once, and more than once have been close to a mystical experience of unity with the universe. The two states resemble each other: one has no wall, one is absolutely naked and diminished to essence. Then death would be the rejection of life because we cannot let go what we wish so hard to keep, but have to let go if we are to continue to grow.
-May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude (page 57)

. . . my life seems dazzling to many people in its productivity, in what it communicates that is human and fulfilled, and hence fulfilling. But the truth is that whatever good effect my work may have comes, rather, from my own sense of isolation and vulnerability.
-May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude (page 115)