Quotes By Person: Anne Sexton
“Any writer, any artist, I'm sure is obsessed with death, a prerequisite for life.”
-Anne Sexton
~
“Daddy?
That's another kind of prison.
It's not the prince at all,
but my father
drunkenly bent over my bed,
circling the abyss like a shark....”
-Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty), Anne Sexton
~
“Do I not feel the hunger so acutely
that I would rather die than look
into its face?”
-Cigarettes and Whiskey and Wild, Wild Women, Anne Sexton
~
“We talked of death, and this was life to us.”
-describing friendship with Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton
~
“Even so, I must admire your skill.
You are so gracefully insane.”
-Elegy In The Classroom, Anne Sexton
~
“Cold slicing the windowpane
like a razor blade
for God, it seems,
has turned his backside to us,
giving us the dark negative,
the death wing....”
-God's Backside, Anne Sexton
~
“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.”
-Her Kind, Anne Sexton
~
“I am alone here in my own mind.
There is no map
and there is no road.”
-January 24th, 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.”
-Letters to Dr. Y...., Anne Sexton
~
“Is life something you play?
And all the time wanting to get rid of it?
And further, everyone yelling at you
to shut up. And no wonder!
People don't like to be told
that you're sick
and then be forced
to watch
you
come
down with the hammer.”
-Live, Anne Sexton
~
“This is my death...and it will profit me to understand it.”
-Making a Living, Anne Sexton
~
“My death from the wrists,
two name tags,
blood worn like a corsage
to bloom
one on the left and one on the right.”
-Menstruation At 40, Anne Sexton
~
“But I would cry,
rooted into the wall that
was once my mother,
if I could remember how
and if I had the tears.”
-Self In 1958, Anne Sexton
~
“What is reality?
I am a plaster doll; I pose
with eyes that cut open without landfall or nightfall
upon some shellacked and grinning person,
eyes that open, blue, steel, and close.
Am I approximately an I. Magnin transplant?”
-Self In 1958, Anne Sexton
~
“I see now that we store him up
year after year, old suicides
and I know at the news of your death,
a terrible taste for it, like salt.”
-Sylvia's Death, Anne Sexton
~
“Thief --
how did you crawl into,
crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long.”
-Sylvia's Death, Anne Sexton
~
“The pills are a mother, but better,
every color and as good as sour balls.
I'm on a diet from death.”
-The Addict, Anne Sexton
~
“Yes
I try
to kill myself in small amounts,
an innocuous occupation.
Actually I'm hung up on it.”
-The Addict, Anne Sexton
~
“Part way back from Bedlam
I came to my mother's house in Gloucester,
Massachusetts. And this is how I came
to catch at her; and this is how I lost her.
I cannot forgive your suicide, my mother said.
And she never could.”
-The Double Image, Anne Sexton
~
“And oh they bring to mind the grave,
so humble, so willing to be beat upon
with its awful lettering and
the body lying underneath
without an umbrella.”
-The Fury of Rain Storms, Anne Sexton
~
“she is his selection, part time.
you know the story too! look,
when it is over he places her,
like a phone, back on the hook.”
-You All Know the Story of the Other Woman, Anne Sexton
Navigation
Back to 'Quotes'
Back to 'Do You SI?'