Anne Sexton Quotes - Page 3

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Images are the heart of poetry ... You're not a poet without imagery.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I think it will be a miracle if I don't someday end up killing myself.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Nature is full of teeth that come in one by one, then decay, fall out.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

There is an animal inside me, clutching fast to my heart, a huge crab.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

To be without God is to be a snake / who wants to swallow an elephant.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I wonder if the artist ever lives his life--he is so busy recreating it.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

To tell the truth days are all the same size and words aren't much company.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Yet love enters my blood like an I.V., dripping in its little white moments.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

O yellow eye, let me be sick with your heat, let me be feverish and frowning.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Let there be seasons so that our tongues will be rich in asparagus and limes.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I've grown tired of love You are the trouble with me I watch you walk right by

• Anne Sexton / Poet

The place I live in is a kind of maze and I keep seeking the exit or the home.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

The man inside of woman ties a knot so that they will never again be separate.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

The day of fire is coming, the thrush will fly ablaze like a little sky rocket.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

You who have inhabited me in the deepest and most broken place, are going, going

• Anne Sexton / Poet

The windows, the starving windows that drive the trees like nails into my heart.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

No one to hate except the slim fish of memory that slides in and out of my brain.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

There is hope. There is hope everywhere. Today God give milk and I have the pail.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I would like a simple life / yet all night I am laying / poems away in a long box.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

The tongue, the Chinese say, is like a sharp knife: it kills without drawing blood.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

The stars are pears that no one can reach, even for a wedding. Perhaps for a death.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I like you; your eyes are full of language." [Letter to Anne Clarke, July 3, 1964.]

• Anne Sexton / Poet

To die whole, riddled with nothing but desire for it, is like breakfast after love.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Maybe, although my heart is a kitten of butter, I am blowing it up like a zeppelin.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

My business is words. Words are like labels, or coins, or better, like swarming bees.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Our children tremble in their teen-age cribs, whirling off on a thumb or a motorcycle.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

The soul was not cured, it was as full as a clothes closet of dresses that did not fit.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I was only sitting here in my white study with the awful black words pushing me around.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Jesus saw the multitudes were hungry and He said, Oh Lord, send down a short-order cook.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

God went out of me as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun became a latrine.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Daylight is nobody's friend. God comes in like a landlord and flashes on his brassy lamp.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

Well, one gets out of bed and the planets don't always hiss or muck up the day, each day.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I am stuffing your mouth with your promises and watching you vomit them out upon my face.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

All considerations for these human remains! They must have an escort! They are classified!

• Anne Sexton / Poet

[I] have fantasies of killing myself and thus being the powerful one not the powerless one.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

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

• Anne Sexton / Poet

When I lie down to love, old dwarf heart shakes her head. Like an imbecile she was born old.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

I am so imperfect, can you love me when really my soul is deformed? Will you love me anyhow?

• Anne Sexton / Poet

The fish are naked. The fish are always awake. They are the color of old spoons and caramels.

• Anne Sexton / Poet

The little girl skipped by under the wrinkled oak leaves and held fast to a replica of herself.