Quotes by Anne Sexton

“Watch out for intellect,because it knows so much it knows nothingand leaves you hanging upside down,mouthing knowledge as your heartfalls out of your mouth.”

“Do you like me?No answer.Silence bounced, fell off his tongueand sat between usand clogged my throat.It slaughtered my trust.It tore cigarettes out of my mouth.We exchanged blind words,and I did no...”

“Live or die, but don't poison everything.”

“I am, to be sure, afraid that if you knew me that you wouldnt love me. But this must be facedI fear it in any relationship. Thus I am perhaps afraid to reveal facts about thingsor to say too much f...”

“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 n...”

“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 t...”

“And what of the dead? They lie without shoesin the stone boats. They are more like stonethan the sea would be if it stopped. They refuseto be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone. ”

“Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.”

“As it has been said:Love and a coughcannot be concealed.Even a small cough.Even a small love.”

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

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

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

“I am God, la de dah.”

“Fee-fi-fo-fum -Now I'm borrowed.Now I'm numb.”

“Live or die, but don't poison everything...Well, death's been herefor a long time --it has a hell of a lotto do with helland suspicion of the eyeand the religious objectsand how I mourned themwhen ...”

“Thats what I do: I make coffee and occasionally succumb to suicidal nihilism. But you shouldnt worry poetry is still first. Cigarettes and alcohol follow”

“The grass as bristly and stout as chives and me wondering when the ground will break and me wondering how anything fragile survives”

“Many women are singing together of this: one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine, one is at the aquarium tending a seal, one is dull at the wheel of her Ford, one is at the toll gate collectin...”

“Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping aro...”

“Some women marry houses.”