Anne Sexton Quotes

I Love You. You Are Closest To My Heart, Closer Than Any Other Human Being. You Are My Extension. You Are My Prayer. You Are My Belief In God. For Better Or Worse You Inherit Me.

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.

Somebody Who Should Have Been Born Is Gone. Yes, Woman, Such Logic Will Lead To Loss Without Death. Or Say What You Meant, You Coward . . . This Baby That I Bleed.

There Once Was A Miller With A Daughter As Lovely As A Grape. He Told The King That She Could Spin Gold Out Of Common Straw. The King Summoned The Girl And Locked Her In A Room Full Of Straw And Told Her To Spin It Into Gold Or She Would Die Like A Criminal. Poor Grape With No One To Pick. Luscious And Round And Sleek. Poor Thing. To Die And Never See Brooklyn. (rumpelstiltskin)

No Matter Whose Bed You Die In The Bed Will Be Yours For Your Voyage Onto The Surgical Andiron Of God.

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.

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.

I Did Not Know The Woman I Would Be Nor That Blood Would Bloom In Me Each Month Like An Exotic Flower, Nor That Children, Two Monuments, Would Break From Between My Legs.

With This Pen I Take In Hand My Selves And With These Dead Disciples I Will Grapple. Though Rain Curses The Window Let The Poem Be Made.

Women Tell Time By The Body. They Are Like Clocks. They Are Always Fastened To The Earth, Listening For Its Small Animal Noises.

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

[i] Have Fantasies Of Killing Myself And Thus Being The Powerful One Not The Powerless One.