Anne Sexton - Body Quotes

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God went out of me as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun became a latrine. God went out of my fingers. They became stone. My body became a side of mutton and despair roamed the slaughterhouse.

Anne Sexton
Here in the hospital, I say,
that is not my body, not my body.
I am not here for the doctors
to read like a recipe.

Anne Sexton
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
Women tell time by the body. They are like clocks. They are always fastened to the earth, listening for its small animal noises.

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

Anne Sexton
Perhaps I am no one.
True, I have a body
and I cannot escape from it.
I would like to fly out of my head,
but that is out of the question.
It is written on the table of destiny
that I am stuck here in this human form.
That being the case
I would like to call attention to my problem.

Anne Sexton
Fact: death too is in the egg.
Fact: the body is dumb, the body is meat.
And tomorrow the O. R. Only the summer was sweet.

Anne Sexton
I, in my brand new body,
which was not a woman's yet,
told the stars my questions
and thought God could really see
the heat and the painted light,
elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.

Anne Sexton