Anne Sexton Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• The summer has seized you, as when, last month in Amalfi, I saw lemons as large as your desk-side globe-that miniature map of the world-and I could mention, too, the market stalls of mushrooms and garlic bugs all engorged. Or I even think of the orchard next door, where the berries are done and the apples are beginning to swell. And once, with our first backyard,I remember I planted an acre of yellow beans we couldn't eat.

  Anne Sexton

  Summer, Thinking, Doors

  9 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

  9 Copy quote

• The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that's saying a lot.

  Anne Sexton

  Beautiful, Sex, Writing

  13 Copy quote

• I am teaching... This year it's kind of like having a love affair with a rhinoceros.

  Anne Sexton

  Education, Teaching, Kind

  "Anne Sexton: A Self-portrait in Letters".

  7 Copy quote

• My eyes, those sluts, those whores, would play no more.

  Anne Sexton

  Eye, Play

  "The Book of Folly". Book by Anne Sexton, "Killing the Spring", 1972.

  8 Copy quote

• Talk to me about sadness. I talk about it too much in my own head but I never mind others talking about it either; I occasionally feel like I tremendously need others to talk about it as well.

  Anne Sexton

  Sadness, Talking, Mind

  7 Copy quote

• The sea is mother-death and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up.

  Anne Sexton

  Mother, Winning, Sea

  11 Copy quote

• The boys and girls are one tonight. They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies. They take off shoes. They turn off the light. The glimmering creatures are full of lies. They are eating each other. They are overfed. At night, alone, I marry the bed.

  Anne Sexton

  Girl, Lying, Boys

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.137, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  13 Copy quote

• I’ll put it out there: I am scarred by the nostalgic indicipherability of my own desires; I an engulfed by the intimidating unknown, pushed through darkness and dragged down by the irretrievable past sweetness of my memories.

  Anne Sexton

  Memories, Past, Darkness

  13 Copy quote

• I raise my pelvis to God
  so that it may know the truth of how
  flowers smash through the long winter.

  Anne Sexton

  Faith, Sex, Flower

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

  10 Copy quote

• They [daisies] are my favorite flower. There is something innocent and vulnerable about them as if they thanked you for admiring them.

  Anne Sexton

  Flower, Vulnerable, Innocent

  Anne Sexton, Linda Gray Sexton, Lois Ames (2004). “Anne Sexton: A Self-portrait in Letters”, p.374, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  15 Copy quote

• Earth, earthriding your merry-go-roundtoward extinction,right to the rootsthickening the oceans like gravy,festering in your caves,you are becoming a latrine.

  Anne Sexton

  Ocean, Caves, Earth

  Anne Sexton, “As It Was Written”

  8 Copy quote

• Depression is boring, I think and I would do better to make some soup and light up the cave.

  Anne Sexton

  Depression, Thinking, Light

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

  28 Copy quote

• Once upon a time we were all born,
  popped out like jelly rolls
  forgetting our fishdom,
  the pleasuring seas,
  the country of comfort,
  spanked into the oxygens of death.

  Anne Sexton

  Country, Oxygen, Sea

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

  10 Copy quote

• Suddenly I'm not half the girl
  I used to be.
  There's a shadow hanging over me . . .
  From me to you out of my electric devil.

  Anne Sexton

  Girl, Fear, Shadow

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.260, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  5 Copy quote

• Why are all these dolls falling out of the sky?
  Was there a father?
  Or have the planets cut holes in their nets
  and let our childhood out,
  or are we the dolls themselves,
  born but never fed?

  Anne Sexton

  Father, Fall, Cutting

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

  4 Copy quote

• I keep feeling that there isn't one poem being written by any one of us - or a book or anything like that. The whole life of us writers, the whole product I guess I mean, is the one long poem - a community effort if you will. It's all the same poem. It doesn't belong to any one writer - it's God's poem perhaps. Or God's people's poem.

  Anne Sexton

  Book, Mean, Long

  7 Copy quote

• The sky breaks.
  It sags and breathes upon my face.
  in the presence of mine enemies, mine enemies
  The world is full of enemies.
  There is no safe place.

  Anne Sexton

  Sky, Enemy, World

  Anne Sexton (1964). “Selected poems”

  10 Copy quote

• In a letter (no matter how quickly it is written or honestly or freely or lovingly) it is more possible to be loving and lovable, more possible to reach out and to take in ... I feel I have somehow deceived you into thinking this is really a human relationship. It is a letter relationship between humans.

  Anne Sexton

  Thinking, Letters, Matter

  8 Copy quote

• One of my secret instructions to myself as a poet is "Whatever you do, don't be boring."

  Anne Sexton

  Secret, Boring, Poet

  6 Copy quote

• The ground has on its clothes. The trees poke out of sheets and each branch wears the sock of God.

  Anne Sexton

  Winter, Clothes, Snow

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

  7 Copy quote

• Bless all useful objects,
  the spoons made of bone,
  the mattress I cook my dreams upon,
  the typewriter that is my church
  with an altar of keys always waiting.

  Anne Sexton

  Dream, Keys, Typewriters

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

  9 Copy quote

• What a lay me down this is
  with two pink, two orange,
  two green, two white goodnights.

  Anne Sexton

  Sleep, Two, White

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.115, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  8 Copy quote

• The silence is death.
  It comes each day with its shock
  to sit on my shoulder, a white bird,
  and peck at the black eyes
  and the vibrating red muscle
  of my mouth.

  Anne Sexton

  Eye, White, Bird

  Anne Sexton, Diane Wood Middlebrook, Diana Hume George (2000). “Selected Poems of Anne Sexton”, p.181, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  10 Copy quote

• Suicide is, after all, the opposite of the poem.

  Anne Sexton

  Suicide, Opposites

  8 Copy quote

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