Anne Sexton Quotes & Sayings

Tuesday

I have invented a lie.
There is no other day but Monday.
It seemed reasonable to pretend
that I could change the day
like a pair of socks.
To tell the truth
days are all the same size
and words aren't much company.
If I were sick, I'd be a child,
tucked in under the woolens, sipping my broth.
As it is,
the days are not worth grabbing or lying about.
Nevertheless, you are the only one
that I can bother with this matter.

Monday

It would be pleasant to be drunk:
faithless to my tongue and hands,
giving up the boundaries
for the heroic gin.
Dead drunk
is the term I think of,
insensible,
neither cool nor warm,
without a head or foot.
To be drunk is to be intimate with a fool.
I will try it shortly. — Anne Sexton

There is rust in my mouth,the stain of an old kiss. — Anne Sexton

I leave you, home,
when I'm ripped from the doorstep
by commerce or fate. Then I submit
to the awful subway of the world ... — Anne Sexton

God has a brown voice, soft and full as beer. — Anne Sexton

Today is made of yesterday, each time I steal
toward rites I do not know, waiting for the lost
ingredient, as if salt or money or even lust
would keep us calm and prove us whole at last. — Anne Sexton

They could not listen.
They could not stop.
What they did was the death dance.
What they did would do them in. — Anne Sexton

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

I cannot walk an inch / without trying to walk to God. — Anne Sexton

I am crazy as hell, but I know it. And knowing it is a kind of sanity that makes the sickness worse. — Anne Sexton

Suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build. — Anne Sexton

My faith
is a great weight
hung on a small wire,
as doth the spider
hang her baby on a thin web. — Anne Sexton

Daylight is nobody's friend. God comes in like a landlord and flashes on his brassy lamp. — Anne Sexton

Love your self's self where it lives. — Anne Sexton

Out of used furniture she made a tree. — Anne Sexton

She suffers according to the digits
of my hate. I hear the filaments
of alabaster. I would lie down
with them and lift my madness
off like a wig. I would lie
outside in a room of wool
and let the snow cover me.
Paris white or flake white
or argentine, all in the washbasin
of my mouth, calling "Oh."
I am empty. I am witless.
Death is here. There is no
other settlement. — Anne Sexton

Oh, darling, let your body in, let it tie you in, in comfort. — Anne Sexton

Unless I can shake myself free of my dog, my flag,
of my desk, my mind, I find life a bit of a drag.
Not always, mind you. Usually I'm like my frying pan
useful, graceful, sturdy and with no caper, no plan. — Anne Sexton

I know that I have died before - once in November. — Anne Sexton

Need is not quite belief. — Anne Sexton

It is a dead heart.
It is inside of me.
It is a stranger
yet once it was agreeable,
opening and closing like a clam. — Anne Sexton

O yellow eye,
let me be sick with your heat,
let me be feverish and frowning. — Anne Sexton

And tonight our skin, our bones, that have survived our fathers, will meet, delicate in the hold, fastened together in an intricate lock. Then one of us will shout, "My need is more desperate!" and I will eat you slowly with kisses even though the killer in you has gotten out. — Anne Sexton

All day I've built
a lifetime and now
the sun sinks to
undo it. — Anne Sexton

Being kissed on the back of the knee is a moth at the windowscreen ... — Anne Sexton

Evil is maybe lying to God.
Or better, lying to love. — Anne Sexton

One thing I know about death is that it touches my psyche and mumbles in her magnificently unknown words; it floats within me and wanders through my bones every day. — Anne Sexton

It's a little mad, but I believe I am many people. When I am writing a poem, I feel I am the person who should have written it. — Anne Sexton

The boys and girls are one tonight.
They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies.
They take off shoes. They turn off the light.
The glimmering creatures are full of lies.
They are eating each other. They are overfed.
At night, alone, I marry the bed. — Anne Sexton

It was as if a morning-glory had bloomed in her throat, and all that blue and small pollen ate into my heart, violent and religious — Anne Sexton

Mood can be as important as sense. — Anne Sexton

All the oxygen of the world was in them.
All the feet of the babies of the world were in them.
All the crotches of the angels of the world were in them.
All the morning kisses of Philadelphia were in them. — Anne Sexton

To A Friend Whose Work Has Come To Triumph
Consider Icarus, pasting those sticky wintgs on,
testing that strange little tug at his shoulder blade,
and think of that first flawless moment over the lawn
of the labyrinth. Think of the difference it made!
There below are the trees, as awkward as camels;
and here are the shocked starlings pumping past
and think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well:
larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast
of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
Feel the fire at his neck and see how casually
he glances up and is caught, wondrously tunneling
into that hot eye. Who cares that feel back to the sea?
See him acclaiming the sun and come plunging down
while his sensible daddy goes straight into town. — Anne Sexton

I love the word warm.
It is almost unbearable
so moist and breathlike. — Anne Sexton

We are America.
We are the coffin fillers.
We are the grocers of death.
We pack them in crates like cauliflowers. — Anne Sexton

Frog has no nerves.
Frog is as old as a cockroach.
Frog is my father's genitals.
Frog is a malformed doorknob.
Frog is a soft bag of green. — Anne Sexton

The place I live in is a kind of maze and I keep seeking the exit or the home. — Anne Sexton

God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer. — Anne Sexton

Now I am going back
And I have ripped my hand
From your hand as I said I would
And I have made it this far ... — Anne Sexton

I don't care, I love you anyhow. It is too late to turn you out of my heart. Part of you lives here. — Anne Sexton

When I'm writing, I know I'm doing the thing I was born to do. — Anne Sexton

Maybe, although my heart
is a kitten of butter,
I am blowing it up like a zeppelin. — Anne Sexton

Someone is dead.
Even the trees know it,
those poor old dancers who come on lewdly,
all pea-green scarfs and spine pole. — Anne Sexton

Some ghosts are women,
neither abstract nor pale,
their breasts as limp as killed fish.
Not witches, but ghosts
who come, moving their useless arms
like forsaken servants.
Not all ghosts are women,
I have seen others;
fat, white-bellied men,
wearing their genitals like old rags.
Not devils, but ghosts.
This one thumps barefoot, lurching
above my bed.
But that isn't all.
Some ghosts are children.
Not angels, but ghosts;
curling like pink tea cups
on any pillow, or kicking,
showing their innocent bottoms, wailing
for Lucifer. — Anne Sexton

Poems aren't postcards to send home. — Anne Sexton

This one day her mother gave her
a basket of wine and cake
to take to her grandmother
because she was ill.
Wine and cake?
Where's the aspirin? The penicillin?
Where's the fruit juice?
Peter Rabbit got camomile tea.
But wine and cake it was. — Anne Sexton

Somebody sees me, and I see myself through them. Then it's all gone, the whole world falls apart. — Anne Sexton

We do not explain my husband's insane abuse
and we do not say why your wild-haired wife has fled
or that my father opened like a walnut and then was dead.
Your palms fold over me like knees. Love is the only use. — Anne Sexton

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. — Anne Sexton

My objects dream and wear new costumes,
compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands
and the sea that bangs in my throat. — Anne Sexton

There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
Today God give milk
and I have the pail. — Anne Sexton

When I lie down to love,
old dwarf heart shakes her head.
Like an imbecile she was born old. — Anne Sexton

But I can't. Need is not quite belief. — Anne Sexton

Despite my asbestos gloves,
the cough is filling me with black,
and a red powder seeps through my veins ... — Anne Sexton

Not that it was beautiful,
but that, in the end, there was
a certain sense of order there;
something worth learning
in that narrow diary of my mind — Anne Sexton

But even in a telephone booth
evil can seep out of the receiver
and we must cover it with a mattress,
and then tear it from its roots
and bury it,
bury it. — Anne Sexton

If the doctors cure
then the sun sees it.
If the doctors kill
then the earth hides it.
The doctors should fear arrogance
more than cardiac arrest. — Anne Sexton

The man
inside of woman
ties a knot
so that they will
never again be separate ... — Anne Sexton

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

The town does not exist
except where one black-haired tree slips
up like a drowned woman into the hot sky. — Anne Sexton

So I won't hang around in my hospital shift,
repeating The Black Mass and all of it.
I say Live, Live because of the sun,
the dream, the excitable gift. — Anne Sexton

I burn the way money burns. — Anne Sexton

Today God gives milk / and I have the pail. — Anne Sexton

I have forgiven all the old actors for dying.
A new one comes on with the same lines,
like large white growths, in his mouth.
The dancers come on from the wings,
perfectly mated. — Anne Sexton

What a lay me down this is
with two pink, two orange,
two green, two white goodnights. — Anne Sexton

I'd won the world
but like a
forsaken explorer,
I'd lost
my map. — Anne Sexton

Being sixteen in the pants I died full of questions — Anne Sexton

I'm the crazy one who thinks that words reach people. — Anne Sexton

I never seemed to like the spring for what it was; I always loved it for what it might have been. In the head. In the heart of hearts. It is in my ability, I think, to love something fully only if I am naturally, compulsively, irrationally drawn to it. — Anne Sexton

The tongue, the Chinese say,
is like a sharp knife:
it kills
without drawing blood. — Anne Sexton

And if I tried
to give you something else,
something outside myself,
you would not know
that the worst of anyone
can be, finally,
an accident of hope — Anne Sexton

The sea is mother-death and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up. — Anne Sexton

Take adultery or theft.
Merely sins.
It is evil who dines on the soul,
stretching out its long bone tongue.
It is evil who tweezers my heart,
picking out its atomic worms. — Anne Sexton

A starving man doesn't ask what the meal is. — Anne Sexton

You who have inhabited me
in the deepest and most broken place,
are going, going — Anne Sexton

I grow old on my bitterness. — Anne Sexton

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. — Anne Sexton

Let the light be called Day so that men may grow corn or take busses. — Anne Sexton

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

You fell, she said, just remember you fell.
I fell, is all he told the doctors
in the big hospital. A nice lady came
and asked him questions but because
he didn't want to be sent away he said, I fell.
He never said anything else although he could talk fine. — Anne Sexton

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. — Anne Sexton

The soul was not cured,
it was as full as a clothes closet
of dresses that did not fit. — Anne Sexton

Poetry led me by the hand out of madness. — Anne Sexton

Rejoice with the day lily for it is born for a day to live by the mailbox and glorify the roadside — Anne Sexton

I think I've been writing black poems all along, wearing my white mask. I'm always the victim ... but no longer! — Anne Sexton

Poems reach me, and hold me, and give me pleasure. — Anne Sexton

From "Her Kind"
I have found the warm caves in the woods,
filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,
closets, silks, innumerable goods;
fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:
whining, rearranging the disaligned.
A woman like that is misunderstood.
I have been her kind. — Anne Sexton

My mouth blooms like a cut.
I've been wronged all year, tedious
nights, nothing but rough elbows in them
and delicate boxes of Kleenex calling crybaby
crybaby, you fool!
Before today my body was useless.
Now it's tearing at its square corners.
It's tearing old Mary's garments off, knot by knot
and see - Now it's shot full of these electric bolts.
Zing! A resurrection!
Once it was a boat, quite wooden
and with no business, no salt water under it
and in need of some paint. It was no more
than a group of boards. But you hoisted her, rigged her.
She's been elected.
My nerves are turned on. I hear them like
musical instruments. Where there was silence
the drums, the strings are incurably playing. You did this.
Pure genius at work. Darling, the composer has stepped
into fire. — Anne Sexton

Nature is full of teeth
that come in one by one, then
decay,
fall out. — Anne Sexton

After a disaster strikes, it can be very devastating and very challenging. You're going to need a lot of strength and energy, and the American Red Cross suggests you go for the high protein items. — Anne Sexton

One of my secret instructions to myself as a poet is "Whatever you do, don't be boring." — Anne Sexton

My heart is on a budget.
It keeps me on the brink. — Anne Sexton

After Auschwitz"

Anger,
as black as a hook,
overtakes me.
Each day,
each Nazi
took, at 8: 00 A.M., a baby
and sauteed him for breakfast
in his frying pan.

And death looks on with a casual eye
and picks at the dirt under his fingernail.

Man is evil,
I say aloud.
Man is a flower
that should be burnt,
I say aloud.
Man
is a bird full of mud,
I say aloud.

And death looks on with a casual eye
and scratches his anus.

Man with his small pink toes,
with his miraculous fingers
is not a temple
but an outhouse,
I say aloud.
Let man never again raise his teacup.
Let man never again write a book.
Let man never again put on his shoe.
Let man never again raise his eyes,
on a soft July night.
Never. Never. Never. Never. Never.
I say those things aloud.

I beg the Lord not to hear. — Anne Sexton

The trouble is that I am crazy and the room, ah, my own room drinks me. — Anne Sexton

Our eyes are full of terrible confessions. — Anne Sexton

Am I to bless the lost you,
sitting here with my clumsy soul? — Anne Sexton

Maybe I am becoming a hermit,
opening the door for only
a few special animals?
Maybe my skull is too crowded
and it has no opening through which
to feed it soup? — Anne Sexton

As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off. — Anne Sexton

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. — Anne Sexton

I have a black look I do not
like. It is a mask I try on.
I migrate toward it and its frog
sits on my lips and defecates. — Anne Sexton

We talked death with burned-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric light bulb. Sucking on it! — Anne Sexton