Quotes from Anne Sexton

I have been her kind.

I burn like money burns.

To live and know it is only for a moment … that is to know 'the soul' … and it increases closeness and despair and happiness … My life with you increases all things because I value it so much.

Unless the Lord keepeth the city, the watchman guardeth in vain

He read me the Bible to prove I was sinful. For in the night he was betrayed. And then he let me give him a Judas-kiss, that red lock that held us in place, and then I gave him a drink from my cup and he whispered, "Rape, rape." And then I gave him my wrist and he sucked on the blood, hating himself for it, murmuring, "God will see. God will see.

Aunque la lluvia maldiga la ventana/ hágase el poema

The bed itself is an operating table where my dreams slice me to pieces.

I must always forget how one word is able to pick out another, to manner another, until I have got something I might have said … but did not.

Turn wounds into words

At the wedding ceremony the two sisters came to curry favor and the white dove pecked their eyes out. Two hollow spots were left like soup spoons. Cinderella and the prince lived, they say, happily ever after, like two dolls in a museum case never bothered by diapers or dust, never arguing over the timing of an egg, never telling the same story twice, never getting a middle-aged spread, their darling smiles pasted on for eternity. Regular Bobbsey Twins. That story.

The bitterness and sense of defeat she experienced at her mother's accusation never quite left her. Nor did her need to please her father.

She's the one I carried my bones to and built a house that was just a cot and built a life that was over an hour and built a castle where no one lives and built, in the end, a song to go with the ceremony.

Kind Sir: Lost and of your same kind I have turned around twice with my eyes sealed and the woods were white and my night mind saw such strange happenings, untold and unreal. And opening my eyes, I am afraid of course to look—this inward look that society scorns— Still, I search in these woods and find nothing worse than myself, caught between the grapes and the thorns.

She sees to oars and oarlocks for the dinghy, has placed wild flowers at the window at breakfast, sat by the potter's wheel at midday, set forth three children under the moon, three cherubs drawn by Michelangelo, done this with her legs spread out in the terrible months in the chapel.

In a dream, you are never eighty.

and only as she dreamt of the yellow hair did moonlight sift into her mouth.

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

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.

Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.

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

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

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

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

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.