Anne Sexton: Trending quotes

Anne Sexton trending quotes. Read the latest quotes in collection
Anne Sexton: 240 quotes59 likes

“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

Source: Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

“Some women marry houses.”

Anne Sexton

“She married the prince
and all went well
except for the fear —
the fear of sleep.

Briar Rose
was an insomniac…
She could not nap
or lie in sleep
without the court chemist
mixing her some knock-out drops
and never in the prince's presence.”

Anne Sexton

Source: Transformations

“I rot on the wall, my own
Dorian Gray.”

Anne Sexton

"The Double Image"
To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)

“Why have your eyes gone into their own room?”

Anne Sexton book Live or Die

"Your Face on the Dog's Neck"
Live or Die (1966)

“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

"Letter Written During a January Northeaster"
All My Pretty Ones (1962)

“A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents!
As if cycles and children and islands
weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips
and vegetables were never enough.
She thinks she can warm the stars.
A writer is essentially a spy.
Dear love, I am that girl.”

Anne Sexton

"The Black Art"
All My Pretty Ones (1962)

“You said the anger would come back
just as the love did.”

Anne Sexton

Again and Again and Again"
Love Poems (1969)

“I was spread out daily
and examined for flaws.”

Anne Sexton book Live or Die

"Those Times..."
Live or Die (1966)

“The tongue, the Chinese say,
is like a sharp knife:
it kills
without drawing blood.”

Anne Sexton

"The Dead Heart"
The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975)

“Beauty is a simple passion,
but, oh my friends, in the end
you will dance the fire dance in iron shoes.”

Anne Sexton

"Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"
Transformations (1971)

“I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.”

Anne Sexton

"Her Kind"
To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)

“There is rust in my mouth,
the stain of an old kiss.”

Anne Sexton

"The Lost Lie" from The Divorce Papers
45 Mercy Street (1976)

“I am murdering me, where I kneeled at your kiss.
I am pushing knives through the hands
that created two into one.
Our hands do not bleed at this,
they lie still in their dishonor.”

Anne Sexton

"Killing the Love" from The Divorce Papers
45 Mercy Street (1976)

“Dearest,
although everything has happened,
nothing has happened.”

Anne Sexton

"Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing Long Island Sound"
All My Pretty Ones (1962)

“Earth, earth
riding your merry-go-round
toward extinction,
right to the roots
thickening the oceans like gravy,
festering in your caves,
you are becoming a latrine.”

Anne Sexton

"As It Was Written" from Last Poems
Poems 1971-1973 (1981)

“What can I do with this memory?
Shake the bones out of it?
Defoliate the smile?
Stub out the chin with cigarettes?
Take the face of the man I love
and squeeze my foot into it,
when all the while my heart is making a museum?
I love you the way the oboe plays.
I love you the way skinny dipping makes my body feel.
I love you the way a ripe artichoke tastes.
Yet I fear you,
as one in the desert fears the sun.”

Anne Sexton

"Waking Alone" from The Divorce Papers
45 Mercy Street (1976)

“I am alive when your fingers are.”

Anne Sexton

"The Breast"
Love Poems (1969)

“I imitate
a memory of belief
that I do not own.”

Anne Sexton

"The Division of Parts"
To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)