Anne Sexton Quotes

Quotes about:

• I am a collection of dismantled almosts.

  Anne Sexton

  Who I Am, Personality, Imperfection

  72 Copy quote

• Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.

  Anne Sexton

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  73 Copy quote

• I’m lost. And it’s my own fault. It’s about time I figured out that I can’t ask people to keep me found.

  Anne Sexton

  Life, People, Faults

  Anne Sexton, Linda Gray Sexton, Lois Ames (2004). “Anne Sexton: A Self-portrait in Letters”, p.75, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  69 Copy quote

• Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out of your mouth.

  Anne Sexton

  Love, Fall, Heart

  Anne Sexton, “Admonitions To A Special Person”

  63 Copy quote

• As it has been said: Love and a cough cannot be concealed. Even a small cough. Even a small love.

  Anne Sexton

  Said, Concealed, Has Beens

  Anne Sexton, “Small Wire”

  70 Copy quote

• Sometimes the soul takes pictures of things it has wished for, but never seen.

  Anne Sexton

  Soul, Sometimes

  11 Copy quote

• I am alone here in my own mind. There is no map and there is no road. It is one of a kind just as yours is.

  Anne Sexton

  Mind, Maps, Kind

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.262, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  43 Copy quote

• I am crazy as hell, but I know it. And knowing it is a kind of sanity that makes the sickness worse.

  Anne Sexton

  Crazy, Knowing, Kind

  37 Copy quote

• Love? Be it man. Be it woman. It must be a wave you want to glide in on, give your body to it, give your laugh to it, give, when the gravelly sand takes you, your tears to the land. To love another is something like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

  Anne Sexton

  Prayer, Fall, Love Is

  Anne Sexton, “Admonitions To A Special Person”

  54 Copy quote

• One can't build little white picket fences to keep nightmares out.

  Anne Sexton

  White, Littles, Nightmare

  9 Copy quote

• ...became a woman who learned her own skin and dug into her soul and found it full.

  Anne Sexton

  Soul, Skins, Found

  19 Copy quote

• Meanwhile in my head, I’m undergoing open-heart surgery.

  Anne Sexton

  Heart, Open Heart, Surgery

  Anne Sexton (2001). “Transformations”, p.75, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  54 Copy quote

• I try to take care
  and be gentle to them.
  Words and eggs must be handled with care.
  Once broken they are impossible things to repair.

  Anne Sexton

  Impossible Things, Eggs, Broken

  Anne Sexton (1975). “The Awful Rowing Toward God”, Boston : Houghton Mifflin

  12 Copy quote

• All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children.... I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can't build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out.

  Anne Sexton

  Children, Husband, White

  30 Copy quote

• The joy that isn't shared dies young.

  Anne Sexton

  Happiness, Joy, Inner Peace

  27 Copy quote

• My ideas are a curse.
  They spring from a radical discontent
  with the awful order of things.
  I play clown. I play carpenter. I play nurse.
  I play witch.

  Anne Sexton

  Inspirational, Spring, Order

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.263, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  2 Copy quote

• It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.

  Anne Sexton

  Death, Daughter, Fathers Day

  "A Small Journal" by Anne Sexton, 1974.

  42 Copy quote

• I'm hunting for the truth. It might be a kind of poetic truth, and not just a factual one, because behind everything that happens to you, there is another truth, a secret life.

  Anne Sexton

  Hunting, Secret, Might

  14 Copy quote

• Don’t worry if they say you’re crazy. They said that about me and yet I was saner than all of them. I knew. No matter. You know. Insane or sane, you know. It’s a good thing to know - no matter what they call it.

  Anne Sexton

  Crazy, Worry, Insane

  Anne Sexton, Linda Gray Sexton, Lois Ames (2004). “Anne Sexton: A Self-portrait in Letters”, p.292, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps I am no one. True, I have a body and I cannot escape from it. I would like to fly out of my head, but that is out of the question.

  Anne Sexton

  Body

  Anne Sexton (1975). “The Awful Rowing Toward God”, Boston : Houghton Mifflin

  15 Copy quote

• Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone.

  Anne Sexton

  Stones, Bread, Bites

  Anne Sexton (1975). “The Awful Rowing Toward God”, Boston : Houghton Mifflin

  9 Copy quote

• Our eyes are full of terrible confessions.

  Anne Sexton

  Eye, Confession, Terrible

  Anne Sexton, Linda Gray Sexton, Lois Ames (2004). “Anne Sexton: A Self-portrait in Letters”, p.86, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  10 Copy quote

• Cinderella and the prince
  lived, they say, happily ever after,
  like two dolls in a museum case
  never bothered by diapers or dust,
  never arguing over the timing of an egg,
  never telling the same story twice.

  Anne Sexton

  Happiness, Marriage, Museums

  Anne Sexton (2001). “Transformations”, p.56, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  22 Copy quote

• Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.

  Anne Sexton

  Saint, Moderation, Poet

  Anne Sexton (1975). “The Awful Rowing Toward God”, Boston : Houghton Mifflin

  82 Copy quote

• It's a little mad, but I believe I am many people. When I am writing a poem, I feel I am the person who should have written it.

  Anne Sexton

  Believe, Writing, Self

  10 Copy quote

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