Top 555 quotes by Anne Sexton

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Anne Sexton quote As it has been said:<br />L...

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

2863

Anne Sexton quote Watch out for intellect,<br...

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

“The Complete Poems”. Book by Anne Sexton, 1981.

Love , Poetry , Intellect

2391

Anne, I don't want to live. . . . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can't Live It. I can't even explain. I know how silly it sounds . . . but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it. Ay that's the rub. I am like a stone that lives . . . locked outside of all that's real. . . . Anne, do you know of such things, can you hear???? I wish, or think I wish, that I were dying of something for then I could be brave, but to be not dying, and yet . . . and yet to [be] behind a wall, watching everyone fit in where I can't, to talk behind a gray foggy wall, to live but to not reach or to reach wrong . . . to do it all wrong . . . believe me, (can you?) . . . what's wrong. I want to belong. I'm like a jew who ends up in the wrong country. I'm not a part. I'm not a member. I'm frozen.
Anne Sexton

“Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters”. Book by Anne Sexton, 1977.

Suicide , Death

605

Anne Sexton quote As for me, I am a watercolo...

As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.
Anne Sexton

580

Anne Sexton quote I am stuffing your mouth wi...

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

“The Complete Poems”. Book by Anne Sexton, 1981.

Poetry , Lies , Promises

579

Anne Sexton quote Even so, I must admire your...

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

536

Anne Sexton quote I am alone here in my own m...

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

499

Anne Sexton quote I like you; your eyes are f...

I like you; your eyes are full of language."

[Letter to Anne Clarke, July 3, 1964.]
Anne Sexton

Expression , Language , Eyes , Expressiveness

463

Anne Sexton quote Live or die, but don't pois...

Live or die, but don't poison everything.
Anne Sexton

Life , Death , Poison

441

Anne Sexton quote Only my books anoint me, <b...

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

“The Complete Poems”. Book by Anne Sexton, 1981.

Poetry , Friends , Books

351

Do you like me?”
No answer.
Silence bounced, fell off his tongue
and sat between us
and clogged my throat.
It slaughtered my trust.
It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.
We exchanged blind words,
and I did not cry,
I did not beg,
but blackness filled my ears,
blackness lunged in my heart,
and something that had been good,
a sort of kindly oxygen,
turned into a gas oven.
Anne Sexton

Love , Rejection , Heartbreak

340

Anne Sexton quote Everyone in me is a bird<br...

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

“Love Poems”. Book by Anne Sexton, 1969.

333

Anne Sexton quote Love? Be it man. Be it woma...

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

“The Complete Poems”. Book by Anne Sexton, 1981.

323

Anne Sexton quote All I wanted was a little p...

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

295

Anne Sexton quote Perhaps I am no one. <br />...

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

278

Wanting to Die

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.

Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.

To thrust all that life under your tongue!—
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,

and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
something unsaid, the phone off the hook
and the love, whatever it was, an infection.
Anne Sexton