Anne Sexton Quotes

209 Sourced Quotes

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

Anne Sexton
Bless all useful objects,
the spoons made of bone,
the mattress I cook my dreams upon,
the typewriter that is my church
with an altar of keys always waiting.

Anne Sexton
Thumbs grow into my throat.
I wear slaps like a spot of rouge.

Anne Sexton
To tell the truth
days are all the same size
and words aren't much company.

Anne Sexton
My husband sings Baa Baa black sheep and we pretend
that all's certain and good, that the marriage won't end.

Anne Sexton
The family story tells, and it was told true,
of my great-grandfather who begat eight
genius children and bought twelve almost new
grand pianos. He left a considerable estate
when he died.

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
When they turn the sun
on again I'll plant children
under it, I'll light up my soul
with a match and let it sing....

Anne Sexton
A red-hot needle hangs out of him, he steers by it as if it were a rudder, he would get in the house any way he could and then he would bounce from window to ceiling, buzzing and looking for you.

Anne Sexton
O fallen angel,
the companion within me,
whisper something holy
before you pinch me
into the grave.

Anne Sexton
Slim inquirer, while the old fathers sleep you are reworking their soil, you have a grocery store there down under the earth and it is well stocked with broken wine bottles, old cigars, old door knobs and earth, that great brown flour that you kiss each day.

Anne Sexton
Of course
the New Testament is very small.
Its mouth opens four times
as out-of-date as a prehistoric monster,
yet somehow man-made....

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
I'm an empress.
I wear an apron.
My typewriter writes.
It didn't break the way it warned.
Even crazy, I'm as nice
as a chocolate bar.

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
Yes, I know.
Death sits with his key in my lock.
Not one day is taken for granted.
Even nursery rhymes have put me in hock.

Anne Sexton
Put your mouthful of words away and come with me to watch the lilies open in such a field, growing there like yachts, slowly steering their petals without nurses or clocks.

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

Anne Sexton
True. There is
a beautiful Jesus.
He is frozen to his bones like a chunk of beef.
How desperately he wanted to pull his arms in!
How desperately I touch his vertical and horizontal axes!
But I can't. Need is not quite belief.

Anne Sexton
All considerations
for these human remains!
They must have an escort!
They are classified!

Anne Sexton
Man
is a bird full of mud,
I say aloud.
And death looks on with a casual eye
and scratches his anus.

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
My safe, safe psychosis is broken.
It was hard.
It was made of stone.
It covered my face like a mask.
But it has cracked.

Anne Sexton
No one to hate except the slim fish of memory
that slides in and out of my brain.

Anne Sexton
I tell it stories now and then
and feed it images like honey.
I will not speculate today
with poems that think they're money.

Anne Sexton
Daisies in water are the longest lasting
flower you can give to someone.
Fact.
Buy daisies.
Not roses.

Anne Sexton
When the cow gives blood
and the Christ is born
we must all eat sacrifices.
We must all eat beautiful women.

Anne Sexton
Bike downtown, stick out tongues at the Catholics.
Or form a Piss Club where we all go
in the bushes and peek at each other's sex.

Anne Sexton
This is no dream
just my oily life
where the people are alibis
and the street is unfindable for an
entire lifetime.

Anne Sexton