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Anne Sexton Quotes

Poet

Anne Sexton was an American poet known for her confessional and autobiographical poetry. Her works delved deeply into personal pain, family relationships, and social issues, profoundly influencing 20th-century poetry.

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All Poetry Heart Knows Ifs White God Thinking Poet Men Body Children Life Want Mouths Needs Writing Eye My Heart Sea Born

Famous Anne Sexton Quotes

“Images are the heart of poetry ... You're not a poet without imagery.”

Heart Poet Imagery

Author: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.”

Heart Long Soul Evil Sin My Heart Bones Tongue Worms Adultery Theft Stretching Dine

Book:Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three stories

Source: Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three stories

“There is an animal inside me, clutching fast to my heart, a huge crab.”

Heart Animal Huge My Heart Crabs

Book:The Awful Rowing Toward God

Source: The Awful Rowing Toward God

“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.”

Needs Heart Secret Strength My Heart Bridges Bombs Shy Resolve Shelter Steel Stoicism My Future Moles Bomb Shelters

Book:Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three stories

Source: Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three stories

“When someone kisses someone or flushes the toilet it is my other who sits in a ball and cries. My other beats a tin drum in my heart. My other hangs up laundry as I try to sleep. My other cries and cries and cries when I put on a cocktail dress.”

Trying Heart Self Sleep Cry My Heart Kissing Beats Balls Dresses Toilets Cocktails Laundry Tin Hang Ups Cocktail Dresses

Author:Anne Sexton

“I brush my hair, waiting in the pain machine for my bones to get hard, for the soft, soft bones that were laid apart and were screwed together. They will knit. And the other corpse, the fractured heart, I feed it piecemeal, little chalice. I'm good to it.”

Heart Littles Hard Pain Together Waiting Hair Machines Bones Brushes Corpses Chalice

Book:Love Poems

Source: Love Poems

“There is a good look that I wear like a blood clot. I have sewn it over my left breast. I have made a vocation of it.”

Looks Heart Made Left Blood Breasts Looking Good Vocation Blood Clots

Author:Anne Sexton

“Big heart, wide as a watermelon, but wise as birth, there is so much abundance in the people I have.”

People Heart Bigs Wise Birth Wide Abundance Big Heart

Book:The Awful Rowing Toward God

Source: The Awful Rowing Toward God

“the heart, this child of myself that resides in the flesh, this ultimate signature of the me, the start of my blindness and sleep, builds a death crèche.”

Heart Children Sleep Ultimate Flesh Blindness Signatures

Book:Love Poems

Source: Love Poems

“It is a dead heart. It is inside of me. It is a stranger yet once it was agreeable, opening and closing like a clam.”

Heart Stranger Opening Closing Clams

Book:The Awful Rowing Toward God

Source: The Awful Rowing Toward God

“Maybe, although my heart is a kitten of butter, I am blowing it up like a zeppelin.”

Heart My Heart Kitten Zeppelins Blowing It

Book:The Awful Rowing Toward God

Source: The Awful Rowing Toward God

“When I lie down to love, old dwarf heart shakes her head. Like an imbecile she was born old.”

Heart Age Lying Born Old Age Shakes Dwarfs Dwarves Imbeciles

Book:Selected Poems of Anne Sexton

Source: Selected Poems of Anne Sexton

“Images are probably the most important part of the poem. First of all you want to tell a story, but images are what are going to shore it up and get to the heart of the matter.”

Want Firsts Heart Important Matter Stories Shore

Author:Anne Sexton

“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.”

Knows Love Heart Poetry Fall Watches Mouths Intellect Upside Down Things Upside Down

Author:Anne Sexton

“Look to your heart that flutters in and out like a moth. God is not indifferent to your need. You have a thousand prayers but God has one.”

Needs Looks Heart Prayer Thousand Indifferent Need You Moths

Author:Anne Sexton

“Do you like me?” No answer. Silence bounced, fell off his tongue and sat between us and clogged my throat. It slaughtered my trust. It tore cigarettes out of my mouth. We exchanged blind words, and I did not cry, I did not beg, but blackness filled my ears, blackness lunged in my heart, and something that had been good, a sort of kindly oxygen, turned into a gas oven.”

Heart Answers Silence Cry My Heart Mouths Ears Blind Filled Tongue Like Me Sat Gas Throat Cigarette Oxygen Blackness Ovens Do You Like Me

Author:Anne Sexton

“Meanwhile in my head, I’m undergoing open-heart surgery.”

Heart Surgery Open Heart Heart Surgery

Book:Transformations

Source: Transformations

“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”

Ifs Heart Religious Morning My Heart Glory Blue Violent Throat Pollen Morning Glory

Book:Selected Poems of Anne Sexton

Source: Selected Poems of Anne Sexton

“The windows, the starving windows that drive the trees like nails into my heart.”

Heart Tree My Heart Window Nails Starving

Book:The Awful Rowing Toward God

Source: The Awful Rowing Toward God

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

Heart Kind House Marriage Movement Mouths Skins Wedding Liver Bowel Movements

Book:Selected Poems of Anne Sexton

Source: Selected Poems of Anne Sexton

“My heart is on a budget. It keeps me on the brink.”

Heart My Heart Budgets

Book:Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three stories

Source: Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three stories

“... and my love stays bitterly glowing, spasms of it will not sleep, and I am helpless and thirsty and need shade but there is no one to cover me- not even God.”

Needs Heart Sleep Broken Broken Heart Shade Helpless Glowing Thirsty

Book:45 Mercy Street

Source: 45 Mercy Street

“I love you. You are closest to my heart, closer than any other human being. You are my extension. You are my prayer. You are my belief in God. For better or worse you inherit me.”

Love Humans Heart Belief Prayer Human Beings Love You My Heart Closest Extensions Belief In God

Book:Anne Sexton: A Self-portrait in Letters

Source: Anne Sexton: A Self-portrait in Letters

About the Author

Born: November 9, 1928
Died: October 4, 1974
Known for: Poet
Quotes: 369

Books & Sources

Selected Poems of Anne SextonRelated source material

The Awful Rowing Toward GodRelated source material

Anne Sexton: A Self-portrait in LettersRelated source material

Words for Dr. Y.: uncollected poems with three storiesRelated source material

TransformationsRelated source material

45 Mercy StreetRelated source material

Love PoemsRelated source material

The death notebooksRelated source material

Selected poemsRelated source material

Anne Sexton: A Self Portrait in LettersRelated source material

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