Quotes from Anne Sexton

life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack.

Today life opened inside me like an egg.

I wonder if the artist ever lives his life--he is so busy recreating it.

Most poets are mad. It doesn't qualify us for anything.

I'm lost. And it's my own fault. It's about time I figured out that I can't ask people to keep me found.

Death's in the good-bye.

I want to be a child and not a mother, and I feel guilty about this.

Once upon a time we were all born, popped out like jelly rolls forgetting our fishdom, the pleasuring seas, the country of comfort, spanked into the oxygens of death.

Now I am just an elderly lady who is full of spleen, who humps around greater Boston in a God-awful hat, who never lived and yet outlived her time, hating men and dogs and Democrats.

It is in the small things we see it. The child's first step, as awesome as an earthquake. The first time you rode a bike, wallowing up the sidewalk.

Women tell time by the body. They are like clocks. They are always fastened to the earth, listening for its small animal noises.

I tied down time with a rope but it came back. Then I put my head in a death bowl and my eyes shut up like clams. They didn't come back.

In an old time there was a king as wise as a dictionary.

Every time I get happy the Nana-hex comes through. Birds turn into plumber's tools, a sonnet turns into a dirty joke, a wind turns into a tracheotomy, a boat turns into a corpse.

There is no word for time. Today we will not think to number another summer or watch its white bird into the ground.

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.

I am younger each year at the first snow. When I see it, suddenly, in the air, all little and white and moving; then I am in love again and very young and I believe everything.

My mother was top billing in our house.

I am so imperfect, can you love me when really my soul is deformed? Will you love me anyhow?

Watch out for love (unless it is true, and every part of you says yes including the toes), it will wrap you up like a mummy, and your scream won't be heard and none of your running will run.

I am not immortal. Faustus and I are the also-ran.

The windows, the starving windows that drive the trees like nails into my heart.

I can only sign over everything, the house, the dog, the ladders, the jewels, the soul, the family tree, the mailbox. Then I can sleep. Maybe.