Anne Sexton Quotes - Page 2

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I hoard books. They are people who do not leave.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

And the aura of you remains, remains, remains...

• Anne Sexton / Poet

... man is eating the earth up like a candy bar.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

... a starving man doesn't ask what the meal is.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

the marriage twists, holds firm, a sailor's knot.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I am not at home in myself. I am my own stranger.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Everyone in me is a bird I am beating all my wings

• Anne Sexton / Poet

My heart is on a budget. It keeps me on the brink.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

All I am is the trick of words writing themselves.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I am not immortal. Faustus and I are the also-ran.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

being sixteen in the pants I died full of questions

• Anne Sexton / Poet

There is rust in my mouth,the stain of an old kiss.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Though rain curses the window let the poem be made.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I am in my own mind. I am locked in the wrong house.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

But my future is a secret. / It is as shy as a mole.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I'm the crazy one who thinks that words reach people.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Evil is maybe lying to God. Or better, lying to love.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I cannot walk an inch / without trying to walk to God.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Most poets are mad. It doesn't qualify us for anything.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

As a writer one has to take the chance on being a fool.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Craft is a trick you make up to let you write the poem.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

In an old time there was a king as wise as a dictionary.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Let God be some tribal female who is known but forbidden.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Abundance is scooped from abundance yet abundance remains.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Sometimes I fly like an eagle but with the wings of a wren

• Anne Sexton / Poet

The trouble with therapy is that it makes life go backwards.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Oh, darling, let your body in, let it tie you in, in comfort.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Not that it was beautiful, but that I found some order there.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Thumbs grow into my throat. I wear slaps like a spot of rouge.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Take your foot out of the graveyard, they are busy being dead.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Poetry is my life, my postmark, my hands, my kitchen, my face.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

When I'm writing, I know I'm doing the thing I was born to do.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

All day I've built a lifetime and now the sun sinks to undo it.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Be careful of words, / ... they can be both daisies and bruises.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Even so, I must admire your skill. You are so gracefully insane.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I am out of practice at living. You are as brave as a motorcycle.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I would like to bury all the hating eyes under the sand somewhere.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Fear / a motor, / pumps me around and around / until I fade slowly.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Being kissed on the back of the knee is a moth at the windowscreen.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I want to be a child and not a mother, and I feel guilty about this.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Let the light be called Day so that men may grow corn or take busses.