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Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel

Book by May Sarton · 5 quotes · Persons, Ifs, Knows

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Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing: A Novel Quotes

“The fact is that I have lived with the belief that power, any kind of power, was the one thing forbidden to poets. ... Power requires that the inner person never be unmasked. No, we poets have to go naked. And since this is so, it is better that we stay private people; a naked public person would be rather ridiculous, what?”

“The creative person, the person who moves from an irrational source of power, has to face the fact that this power antagonizes. Under all the superficial praise of the creative is the desire to kill. It is the old war between the mystic and the nonmystic, a war to the death.”