110+ Anne Sexton Quotes On Expressive, Intense And Poignant

Anne Sexton was an American poet and writer from Massachusetts. She was known for her highly personal and confessional poetry, which addressed topics such as depression, suicide, and the difficulties of being a woman. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Anne Sexton on love, expressive, intense.

Top 10 Anne Sexton Quotes

1. Emerald as heavy as a golf course, ruby as dark as an afterbirth, diamond as white as sun on the sea.
2. Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.
3. Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.
4. I am a collection of dismantled almosts.
5. Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out of your mouth.
6. Meanwhile in my head, I’m undergoing open-heart surgery.
7. O starry night, This is how I want to die
8. I am alone here in my own mind. There is no map and there is no road. It is one of a kind just as yours is.
9. It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.
10. I am crazy as hell, but I know it. And knowing it is a kind of sanity that makes the sickness worse.

Anne Sexton Image Quotes

Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard. — Anne Sexton

I am a collection of dismantled almosts. — Anne Sexton

O starry night, This is how I want to die — Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton Short Quotes

• The joy that isn't shared dies young.
• Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.
• But my future is a secret. / It is as shy as a mole.
• I would like a simple life / yet all night I am laying / poems away in a long box.
• Depression is boring, I think and I would do better to make some soup and light up the cave.
• Sometimes I fly like an eagle but with the wings of a wren
• The stars are pears that no one can reach, even for a wedding. Perhaps for a death.
• There is rust in my mouth,the stain of an old kiss.
• ... a starving man doesn't ask what the meal is.
• One can't build little white picket fences to keep nightmares out.

Anne Sexton Quotes About Love

I am younger each year at the first snow. When I see it, suddenly, in the air, all little and white and moving; then I am in love again and very young and I believe everything. — Anne Sexton

God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer. — Anne Sexton

A woman / who loves a woman / is forever young. — Anne Sexton

To love another is somethinglike prayer and it can't be planned, you just fallinto its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief. — Anne Sexton

Now that I have written many words, and let out so many loves, for so many, and been altogether what I always was a woman of excess, of zeal and greed, I find the effort useless. — Anne Sexton

You lay, a small knuckle on my white bed; lay, that fist like a snail, small and strong at my breast. Your lips are animals; you are fed with love. At first, hunger is not wrong. — Anne Sexton

Watch out for love (unless it is true, and every part of you says yes including the toes), it will wrap you up like a mummy, and your scream won't be heard and none of your running will run. — Anne Sexton

I am teaching... This year it's kind of like having a love affair with a rhinoceros. — Anne Sexton

Yet love enters my blood like an I.V., dripping in its little white moments. — Anne Sexton

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. — Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton Quotes About Sucks

The sea is mother-death and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up. — Anne Sexton

You cutting the lawn, fixing the machines, all this leprous day and then more vodka, more soda and the pond forgiving our bodies, the pond sucking out the throb. — Anne Sexton

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

Anne Sexton Famous Quotes And Sayings

Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard. — Anne Sexton

I am a collection of dismantled almosts. — Anne Sexton

Love? Be it man. Be it woman. It must be a wave you want to glide in on, give your body to it, give your laugh to it, give, when the gravelly sand takes you, your tears to the land. To love another is something like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief. — Anne Sexton

O starry night, This is how I want to die — Anne Sexton

All I wanted was a little piece of life, to be married, to have children.... I was trying my damnedest to lead a conventional life, for that was how I was brought up, and it was what my husband wanted of me. But one can't build little white picket fences to keep the nightmares out. — Anne Sexton

Cinderella and the prince lived, they say, happily ever after, like two dolls in a museum case never bothered by diapers or dust, never arguing over the timing of an egg, never telling the same story twice. — Anne Sexton

Come, my pretender, my fritter, my bubbler, my chicken biddy! Oh succulent one, it is but one turn in the road and I would be a cannibal! — Anne Sexton

It was as if a morning-glory had bloomed in her throat, and all that blue and small pollen ate into my heart, violent and religious — Anne Sexton

I try to take care and be gentle to them. Words and eggs must be handled with care. Once broken they are impossible things to repair. — Anne Sexton

I'm hunting for the truth. It might be a kind of poetic truth, and not just a factual one, because behind everything that happens to you, there is another truth, a secret life. — Anne Sexton

The boys and girls are one tonight. They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies. They take off shoes. They turn off the light. The glimmering creatures are full of lies. They are eating each other. They are overfed. At night, alone, I marry the bed. — Anne Sexton

Some women marry houses. It's another kind of skin; it has a heart, a mouth, a liver and bowel movements. — Anne Sexton

The snow has quietness in it; no songs, no smells, no shouts or traffic. When I speak my own voice shocks me. — 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

I was the girl of the chain letter, the girl full of talk of coffins and keyholes, the one of the telephone bills, the wrinkled photo and the lost connections. — 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

Be careful of words, / ... they can be both daisies and bruises. — Anne Sexton

I will be steel! I will build a steel bridge over my need! I will build a bomb shelter over my heart! But my future is a secret. It is as shy as a mole. — Anne Sexton

It's all a matter of history. Brandy is no solace. Librium only lies me down like a dead snow queen. Yes! I am still the criminal. — Anne Sexton

Once upon a time we were all born, popped out like jelly rolls forgetting our fishdom, the pleasuring seas, the country of comfort, spanked into the oxygens of death. — Anne Sexton

I am younger each year at the first snow. — Anne Sexton

Poems aren't postcards to send home. — Anne Sexton

Let there be seasons so that our tongues will be rich in asparagus and limes. — Anne Sexton

We are America. We are the coffin fillers. We are the grocers of death. We pack them in crates like cauliflowers. — Anne Sexton

Our children tremble in their teen-age cribs, whirling off on a thumb or a motorcycle. — Anne Sexton

think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well: larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings! — Anne Sexton

The tongue, the Chinese say, is like a sharp knife: it kills without drawing blood. — Anne Sexton

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

I’ll put it out there: I am scarred by the nostalgic indicipherability of my own desires; I an engulfed by the intimidating unknown, pushed through darkness and dragged down by the irretrievable past sweetness of my memories. — Anne Sexton

They [daisies] are my favorite flower. There is something innocent and vulnerable about them as if they thanked you for admiring them. — Anne Sexton

The silence is death. It comes each day with its shock to sit on my shoulder, a white bird, and peck at the black eyes and the vibrating red muscle of my mouth. — Anne Sexton

Rocks crumble, make new forms, oceans move the continents, mountains rise up and down like ghosts yet all is natural, all is change. — Anne Sexton

God owns heaven but He craves the earth. — Anne Sexton

Nature is full of teeth that come in one by one, then decay, fall out. — Anne Sexton

Death's in the good-bye. — 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

I think it will be a miracle if I don't someday end up killing myself. — Anne Sexton

I raise my pelvis to God so that it may know the truth of how flowers smash through the long winter. — Anne Sexton

At six I lived in a graveyard full of dolls, avoiding myself, my body, the suspect in its grotesque house. — Anne Sexton

Poetry is my life, my postmark, my hands, my kitchen, my face. — Anne Sexton

Psychiatry is a dirty mirror. — Anne Sexton

I am not lazy. I am on the amphetamine of the soul. I am, each day, typing out the God my typewriter believes in. — Anne Sexton

Then all this became history. Your hand found mine. Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. Oh, my carpenter, the fingers are rebuilt. They dance with yours. — Anne Sexton

Well, one gets out of bed and the planets don't always hiss or muck up the day, each day. — Anne Sexton

The sky breaks. It sags and breathes upon my face. in the presence of mine enemies, mine enemies The world is full of enemies. There is no safe place. — Anne Sexton

Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It’s as though I could fly. — 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

And thus Snow White became the prince's bride. The wicked queen was invited to the wedding feast and when she arrived there were red-hot iron shoes, in the manner of red-hot roller skates, clamped upon her feet. — Anne Sexton

I am out of practice at living. You are as brave as a motorcycle. — 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

Earth, earthriding your merry-go-roundtoward extinction,right to the rootsthickening the oceans like gravy,festering in your caves,you are becoming a latrine. — 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. — 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

And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in the stone boats. They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped. They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone. — Anne Sexton

Now I am going back And I have ripped my hand From your hand as I said I would And I have made it this far. — Anne Sexton

Once I was a couple. I was my own king and queen with cheese and bread and rosé on the rocks of Rockport. — Anne Sexton

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

Give me your skin as sheer as a cobweb, let me open it up and listen in and scoop out the dark. — Anne Sexton

All day I've built a lifetime and now the sun sinks to undo it. — 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

I am tearing the feathers out of the pillows, waiting, waiting for Daddy to come home and stuff me so full of our infected child that I turn invisible, but married, at last. — Anne Sexton

Rejoice with the day lily for it is born for a day to live by the mailbox and glorify the roadside — 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 would like to think that no one would die anymore if we all believed in daisies but the worms know better, don't they? They slide into the ear of a corpse and listen to his great sigh. — Anne Sexton

I find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with last year’s cupful and downward into a decade’s quart and downward into a lifetime’s ocean. I alternate treading water and deadman’s float. — Anne Sexton

In a letter (no matter how quickly it is written or honestly or freely or lovingly) it is more possible to be loving and lovable, more possible to reach out and to take in ... I feel I have somehow deceived you into thinking this is really a human relationship. It is a letter relationship between humans. — Anne Sexton

Take a woman talking, purging herself with rhymes, drumming words out like a typewriter, planting words in you like grass seed. You'll move off. — Anne Sexton

Even without wars, life is dangerous. — Anne Sexton

I remember the stink of the liverwurst. How I was put on a platter and laid between the mayonnaise and the bacon. The rhythm of the refrigerator had been disturbed. — Anne Sexton

If the doctors cure then the sun sees it. If the doctors kill then the earth hides it. The doctors should fear arrogance more than cardiac arrest. — Anne Sexton

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

The ground has on its clothes. The trees poke out of sheets and each branch wears the sock of God. — Anne Sexton

I sit at my desk each night with no place to go, opening the wrinkled maps of Milwaukee and Buffalo, the whole U.S., its cemeteries, its arbitrary time zones, through routes like small veins, capitals like small stones. — Anne Sexton

After a disaster strikes, it can be very devastating and very challenging. You're going to need a lot of strength and energy, and the American Red Cross suggests you go for the high protein items. — Anne Sexton

Home is my Bethlehem, my succoring shelter, my mental hospital, my wife, my dam, my husband, my sir, my womb, my skull. — Anne Sexton

I have a black look I do not like. It is a mask I try on. I migrate toward it and its frog sits on my lips and defecates. — Anne Sexton

The future is a fog that is still hanging out over the sea, a boat that floats home or does not. The trade winds blow me, and I do not know where the land is; the waves fold over each other; they are in love with themselves; sleeping in their own skin; and I float over them and I do not know about tomorrow. — Anne Sexton

I rot on the wall, my own Dorian Gray. — Anne Sexton

Abundance is scooped from abundance yet abundance remains. — Anne Sexton

Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me. — Anne Sexton

I am not immortal. Faustus and I are the also-ran. — Anne Sexton

Now I am just an elderly lady who is full of spleen, who humps around greater Boston in a God-awful hat, who never lived and yet outlived her time, hating men and dogs and Democrats. — Anne Sexton

My ideas are a curse. They spring from a radical discontent with the awful order of things. I play clown. I play carpenter. I play nurse. I play witch. — Anne Sexton

Life Lessons by Anne Sexton

1. Anne Sexton's work often focuses on themes of mental health, self-reflection, and the power of vulnerability, teaching us to be honest with ourselves and to embrace our struggles.
2. Her work also encourages us to find beauty and joy in the world around us, even in difficult times.
3. Finally, her work reminds us of the importance of connection and community, and that we are never truly alone.