Anne Sexton Quotes

Some women marry houses.

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

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

Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, a...

Do you like me?”No answer.Silence bounced, fell off his tongueand sat between usand clogged my throa...

I’d won the worldbut like aforsaken explorer,I’d lostmy map.

But suicides have a special language.Like carpenters they want to know which tools.They never ask wh...

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

Sometimes the soul takes pictures of things it has wished for, but never seen.

CourageIt is in the small things we see it.The child's first step,as awesome as an earthquake.The fi...

It is snowing and death bugs meas stubborn as insomnia.

I am, to be sure, afraid that if you knew me that you wouldn’t love me. But this must be faced…I fea...

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

Pain engraves a deeper memory.

Live or die, but don't poison everything.

It doesn't matter who my father was it matters who I remember he was.

Wanting to Die Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that vo...

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

Depression is boring, I thinkand I would do better to makesome soup and light up the cave.

And what of the dead? They lie without shoesin the stone boats. They are more like stonethan the sea...

Death's in the good-bye.

That’s what I do: I make coffee and occasionally succumb to suicidal nihilism. But you shouldn’t wor...

We were fair game but we have kept out of the cesspool. We are strong. We are the good ones. Do not ...

Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a p...

The grass as bristly and stout as chives and me wondering when the ground will break and me wonderin...

Love your self's self where it lives.

He turns the key.Presto!It opens this book of odd taleswhich transform the Brothers Grimm.Transform?...

Poetry led me by the hand out of madness.

exI feel unspeakably lonely. And I feel - drained. It is a blank state of mind and soul I cannot des...

I feel unspeakably lonely. And I feel - drained. It is a blank state of mind and soul I cannot descr...

Clover['s] eyes are full of language.

The rest of my room is book shelves. I hoard books. They are people who do not leave.

Anne, I don't want to live. . . . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can't Live It. I can't even expl...

Fee-fi-fo-fum, now I'm borrowed, now I'm numb.

God went out of me as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun became a latrine. God went o...

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

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

Many women are singing together of this: one is in a shoe factory cursing the machine, one is at the...

Watch out for intellect,because it knows so much it knows nothingand leaves you hanging upside down,...

I am God, la de dah.

Put your mouthful of words away and come with me to watch the lilies open in such a field, growin...

Taking into consideration all your lovelinesswhy can't you burn your bootsoles and yourdraft card? H...

Live or die, but don't poison everything...Well, death's been herefor a long time --it has a hell of...

No. Not really red,but the color of a rose when it bleeds.

I find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with ...

Give me your skin as sheer as a cobweb, let me open it up and listen in and scoop out the dark.

Quite collected at cocktail parties,meanwhile in my headI'm undergoing open-heart surgery.

Each night I am nailed into placeand forget who I am.Daddy? That's another kind of prison.It's not t...