Anne Sexton Quotes - Page 10

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• I must always forget how one word is able to pick out another, to manner another, until I have got something I might have said... but did not.

  Anne Sexton

  Might, Able, Forget

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

• I would sell my life to avoid
  the pain that begins in the crib
  with its bars or perhaps
  with your first breath
  when the planets drill
  your future into you.

  Anne Sexton

  Life, Pain, Bars

  Anne Sexton (1976). “45 Mercy Street”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

  5 Copy quote

• Our checks are pale. Our wallets are invalids.
  Past due, past due, is what our bills are saying
  and yet we kiss in every corner, scuffing the dust
  and the cat. Love rises like bread as we go bust.

  Anne Sexton

  Cat, Kissing, Past

  Anne Sexton (1978). “Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three stories”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

  6 Copy quote

• Now, in my middle age,
  about nineteen in the head I'd say,
  I am rowing, I am rowing.

  Anne Sexton

  Age, Nineteen, Aging

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.229, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• we do not explain my husband's insane abuse
  and we do not say why your wild-haired wife has fled
  or that my father opened like a walnut and then was dead.
  Your palms fold over me like knees. Love is the only use.

  Anne Sexton

  Family, Husband, Father

  Anne Sexton (1964). “Selected poems”

  6 Copy quote

• Jewels! Today each twig is important,
  each ring, each infection, each form
  is all that the gods must have meant.

  Anne Sexton

  Nature, Jewels, Important

  4 Copy quote

• I put the gold star up in the front window
  beside the flag. Alterations is what I know
  and what I did: hems, gussets and seams.

  Anne Sexton

  Stars, Work, Gold

  Anne Sexton (1964). “Selected poems”

  4 Copy quote

• Today is made of yesterday, each time I steal
  toward rites I do not know, waiting for the lost
  ingredient, as if salt or money or even lust
  would keep us calm and prove us whole at last.

  Anne Sexton

  Yesterday, Waiting, Lust

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.25, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

• I love the word warm.
  It is almost unbearable--
  so moist and breathlike.

  Anne Sexton

  Experience, Unbearable, Warm

  Anne Sexton (1978). “Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three stories”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

  4 Copy quote

• Oh thumb,
  I want a drink
  it is dark,
  where are the big people,
  when will I get there...?

  Anne Sexton

  Dark, People, Childhood

  Anne Sexton (1974). “The death notebooks”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

  4 Copy quote

• Blind with love, my daughter
  has cried nightly for horses,
  those long-necked marchers and churners
  that she has mastered, any and all,
  reigning them in like a circus hand.

  Anne Sexton

  Daughter, Horse, Hands

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.112, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• the heart,
  this child of myself that resides in the flesh,
  this ultimate signature of the me, the start
  of my blindness and sleep, builds a death crèche.

  Anne Sexton

  Children, Heart, Sleep

  Anne Sexton (1999). “Love Poems”, p.25, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• There is a good look that I wear
  like a blood clot. I have
  sewn it over my left breast.
  I have made a vocation of it.

  Anne Sexton

  Heart, Blood, Looks

  Anne Sexton, “Again And Again And Again”

  4 Copy quote

• stop the darkness and its amputations
  and find the real McCoy
  in the private holiness
  of my hands.

  Anne Sexton

  Real, Hands, Darkness

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

  4 Copy quote

• Inside many of us
  is a small old man
  who wants to get out.

  Anne Sexton

  Men, Age, Want

  Anne Sexton (2001). “Transformations”, p.17, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• bike downtown, stick out tongues at the Catholics.
  Or form a Piss Club where we all go
  in the bushes and peek at each other's sex.

  Anne Sexton

  Sex, Games, Childhood

  Anne Sexton (1978). “Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three stories”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

  4 Copy quote

• I see myself as one would see another.
  I have been cut in two.

  Anne Sexton

  Cutting, Two, Mental Illness

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.92, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• My safe, safe psychosis is broken.
  It was hard.
  It was made of stone.
  It covered my face like a mask.
  But it has cracked.

  Anne Sexton

  Psychosis, Broken, Safe

  Anne Sexton (1978). “Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three stories”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

  8 Copy quote

• The town is silent. The night boils with eleven stars.
  Oh starry starry night! This is how
  I want to die.

  Anne Sexton

  Stars, Night, Want

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.49, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

• I burn the way money burns.

  Anne Sexton

  Way

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.124, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

• I think of myself as writing for one person, that one perfect reader who understands and loves.

  Anne Sexton

  Writing, Thinking, Perfect

  5 Copy quote

• Let there be a heaven so that man may outlive his grasses.

  Anne Sexton

  Men, Afterlife, Heaven

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.219, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• Big heart,
  wide as a watermelon,
  but wise as birth,
  there is so much abundance
  in the people I have.

  Anne Sexton

  Wise, Heart, People

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

  4 Copy quote

• Of course
  the New Testament is very small.
  Its mouth opens four times
  as out-of-date as a prehistoric monster,
  yet somehow man-made.

  Anne Sexton

  Bible, Men, Monsters

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.85, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• Dead drunk
  is the term I think of,
  insensible,
  neither cool nor warm,
  without a head or a foot.
  To be drunk is to be intimate with a fool.

  Anne Sexton

  Drinking, Thinking, Feet

  Anne Sexton (1964). “Selected poems”

  4 Copy quote

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