Famous Quotes by Anne Sexton
- You are as still as a yardstick. You have a doll’s kiss.
The brain whirls in a fit. The... More
- In this hole your baby is strangling. Your mouth is clay.
Your eyes are made of glass. They... More
- Angel of hope and calendars, do you know despair?
That hole I crawl into with a box of... More
- Did I make you go insane?
Did I turn up your earphone and let a siren drive through?
Did... More
- Anna who was mad,
I have a knife in my armpit.
When I stand on tiptoe I tap out messages. More
- He gets red roses in different places,
the head, that time he was as sleepy as a... More
- Earth, earth
riding your merry-go-round
toward extinction,
right to the roots ... More
- All in all, I’d say,
the world is strangling. More
- It doesn’t matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was. More
- The sea is mother-death and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up. More
- Maybe Rose, there is always another story,
better unsaid, grim or flat or predatory. More
- We bank over Boston. I am safe. I put on my hat.
I am almost someone going home. The story... More
- I swear,
I most solemnly swear, on all the bric-à-brac
of summer loves, I know
you not. More
- for it is dark,
as dark as the leathery dead
and I have lost my green Ford,
my house... More
- the cement wall
of the clumsy calendar
I live in,
my life,
and its hauled... More
- this is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is... More
- Mother frowned at my wasted life.
My father smoked cigars.
My cheeks blossomed with... More
- But you you go ahead,
go on, go on back down
into the graveyard,
lie down where you... More
- Also, I am tired of all the dead.
They refuse to listen,
so leave them alone.
Take... More
- Watch out for love
(unless it is true,
and every part of you says yes including the... More
- ... to break crystal glasses
in celebration,
for you,
when the dark crust is thrown... More
- Man
is a bird full of mud,
I say aloud.
And death looks on with a casual eye
and... More
- I have a black look I do not
like. It is a mask I try on.
I migrate toward it and its... More
- There is a good look that I wear
like a blood clot. I have
sewn it over my left... More
- your eyes just here
with their shades half-drawn over the gunsights,
over your gigantic... More
- you will jump out of the pitch of this house.
It will be a holiday, a parade, a... More
- you were mine
and I lent you out.
I look for uncomplicated hymns
but love has none. More
- the ditch
where I left you once,
like an old root that wouldn’t take hold,
that... More
- Your fists wound like a ball,
little fetus, little snail,
carrying a rage, a leftover... More
- a gold key, your half of a woolen mill,
twenty suits from Dunne’s, an English Ford,
the... More
- The diary of your hurly-burly years
goes to my shelf to wait for my age to pass.
Only in... More
- your itinerary open,
its tolls ticking and greedy,
its highways built up like the new... More
- I sit at my desk
each night with no place to go,
opening the wrinkled maps of Milwaukee... More
- Once I was a couple. I was my own king and queen
with cheese and bread and rosé on the rocks... More
- Angel of beach houses and picnics, do you know solitaire?
Fifty-two reds and blacks and only... More
- She of the rolls that floated in the air, she of the inlaid
woodwork all greasy with lemon,... More
- Oh Angel of the blizzard and blackout, Madam white face,
take me back to that red mouth, that... More
- I have known a crib. I have know the tuck-in of a child
but inside my hair waits the night I... More
- Angel of clean sheets, do you know bedbugs?
Once in a madhouse they came like specks of... More
- Mother of fire, let me stand at your devouring gate
as the sun dies in your arms and you... More
- I said, “The devil is down that festering hole.”
Then he bit me in the buttocks and took... More
- What unusual luck! My body
passively resisting. Part of the leftovers. Part of the kill. More
- My nurses, those starchy ghosts,
hover over me for my lame hours
and my lame days. The... More
- bodies wrapped in elastic bands,
bodies cased in wood or used like telephones,
bodies... More
- Each body is in its bunker. The surgeon applies his gum.
Each body is fitted quickly into its... More
- Listen here. I’ve never played it safe
in spite of what the critics say. More
- bike downtown, stick out tongues at the Catholics.
Or form a Piss Club where we all go
in... More
- Anne,
who were you?
Merely a kid keeping alive. More
- It’s peeling now, age has got it,
a kind of cancer of the background
and also in the... More
- Now you grab me by the ankles.
Now you work your way up the legs
and come to pierce me at... More
- Loving me with my shoes off
means loving my long brown legs,
sweet dears, as good as... More
- His awful skin
stretched out by some tradesman
is like my skin, here between my... More
- They know I’m something to be caught
somewhere in the cemetery hanging upside down
like... More
- I held a bayonet
that was for the earth of your stomach.
The belly button singing its... More
- Those times I mussed his curly black hair
and touched his ten tar-fingers
and swallowed... More
- Father,
you died once,
salted down at fifty-nine,
packed down like a big snow... More
- Daddy?
That’s another kind of prison.
It’s not the prince at all,
but my... More
- The thirteenth fairy,
her fingers as long and thin as straws,
her eyes burnt by... More
- Come be my snooky
and I will give you a root.
That kind of voyage,
rank as honeysuckle. More
- You are a roast beef I have purchased
and I stuff you with my very own onion. More
- You stink like my Mama under your bra
and I vomit into your hand like a jackpot
its cold... More
- Oh sharp diamond, my mother!
I could not count the cost
of all your faces, your... More
- You who led me by the nose,
I saw you as you were.
Then I thought of your body
as one... More
- Now that I have written many words,
and let out so many loves, for so many,
and been... More
- Do I not feel the hunger so acutely
that I would rather die than look
into its face? More
- You always read about it:
the plumber with twelve children
who wins the Irish... More
- The prince was getting tired.
He began to feel like a shoe salesman.
But he gave it one... More
- Cinderella and the prince
lived, they say, happily ever after,
like two dolls in a museum... More
- The hat I was married in,
will it do?
White, broad, fake flowers in a tiny... More
- Still, it would be perfectly fine with me
to die like a nice girl
smelling of Clorox and... More
- because you lied to God outrightly—
told him that all things on earth were in... More
- Roach, foulest of creatures,
who attacks with yellow teeth
and an army of cousins big as... More
- I was tired of being a woman,
tired of the spoons and the pots,
tired of my mouth and my... More
- I’ve been opened and undressed.
I have no arms or legs.
I’m all one skin like a... More
- It is in the small things we see it.
The child’s first step,
as awesome as an... More
- and you’ll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back... More
- God damn it, father-doctor.
I’m really thirty-six.
I see dead rats in the... More
- Father, I’m thirty-six,
yet I lie here in your crib.
I’m getting born... More
- Wrapped in robes
not like Caesar but like liver with bacon
I rest on the stern.... More
- The ship goes on
as though nothing else were happening.
Generation after... More
- But I died yesterday,
“Daddy,” I died,
swallowing the Nazi-Jap-animal
and it... More
- What’s missing is the eyeballs
in each of us, but it doesn’t matter
because you’ve... More
- My demon,
too often undressed,
too often a crucifix I bring forth,
too often a dead... More
- Oh demon within,
I am afraid and seldom put my hand up
to my mouth and stitch it... More
- Demon come forth,
even if it be God I call forth
standing like a carrion,
wanting to... More
- The hope that suddenly overflows the cesspool?
The love that goes down the drain like spit? More
- Despair,
I don’t like you very well.
You don’t suit my clothes or my... More
- I loved you many other times
and I have been, for months,
trying to drown it,
to push... More
- I have killed all the good things,
but they are too stubborn for me.
They hang on. More
- Later,
when blood and eggs and breasts
dropped onto me,
Daddy and his whiskey... More
- I am tearing the feathers out of the pillows,
waiting, waiting for Daddy to come home
and... More
- If the doctors cure
then the sun sees it.
If the doctors kill
then the earth hides... More
- They are not Gods
though they would like to be;
they are only a human
trying to fix... More
- we do not explain my husband’s insane abuse
and we do not say why your wild-haired wife has... More
- Old man, it’s four flights up and for what?
Your room is hardly any bigger than your... More
- Castaway, your time is a flat sea that doesn’t stop,
with no new land to make for and no... More
- I put the gold star up in the front window
beside the flag. Alterations is what I... More
- I have put a padlock
on you, Mother, dear dead human,
so that your great bells,
those... More
- Mother,
strange goddess face
above my milk home,
that delicate asylum,
I ate you up. More
- Have you no beginning and end? Which heart is
the real one? Which eye the seer? More
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