Quotes from Anne Sexton

I know that I have died before—once in November, once in June. How strange to choose June again

She is so naked and singular. She is the sum of yourself and your dream. Climb her like a monument, step after step. She is solid. As for me, I am a watercolor. I wash off.

Even in the pink crib the somehow deficient, the somehow maimed, are thought to have a special pipeline to the mystical, the faint smell of the occult, a large ear on the God-horn.

Further, I must not dream for when I do I see the table set and a faltering crone at my place, her eyes burnt by cigarettes as she eats betrayal like a slice of meat.

You care and it's all over the place.

Some ghosts are women. Not angels, but ghosts.

It is without grace. There is no rhythm in this country of dirt.

O fallen angel, the companion within me, whisper something holy before you pinch me into the grave.

Who are they" "Fallen angels who were not good enough to be saved, nor bad enough to be lost" say the peasantry.

I, who was never quite sure about being a girl, needed another life, another image to remind me. And this was my worst guilt; you could not cure nor soothe it. I made you to find me.

If this is hell, then hell could not be much, neither as special nor as ugly as I was told.

God shined his laughter down upon us like a giant heat lamp and therefore we did not cringe at the death hole

A woman who writes feels too much, Those trances and portents!

Raccoon Coon, why did you come to this dance with a mask on? Why not the tin man and his rainbow girl? Why not Racine, his hair marcelled down to his chest? Why not come as a stomach digesting its worms? Why you little fellow with your ears at attention and your nose poking up like a microphone? You whig emblem, you woman chaser, who do you dance over the wide lawn tonight clanging the garbage pail like great silver bells?

she took hold of herself, knowing she owed Jesus a life

You're the lily and I'm the bee that gets inside.

Because we need. Because we are sore creatures.

we must all eat sacrifices. We must all eat beautiful women.

Today, my small child, Joyce, love your self's self where it lives.

Un bacio nell'incavo del ginocchio è un fruscio di falena alla zanzariera e sì amore mio un puntino luminoso sull'ecometro è Campanellino con la tossetta e due volte perderò l'onore e le stelle saranno confitte come puntine nella notte sì oh sì sì sì due chioccioline all'incavo del ginocchio che accen- dono falò simili a ci- glia che sfregano sì sì sì come pietrina d'accendino bic: e così esisto!

As you know, both Maxine and I like Saul Bellow. It is even hard to dislike parts of his work that one might in some one else. I like Henderson the most.

Say, I am the air I break; or say, I am a spool unwinding.

it was a moment to clutch at for a moment so that you may believe in it and believing is the act of love, I think

You care and its all over the place.