Anne Sexton Quotes - Page 11

the marriage twists, holds firm, a sailor's knot.

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

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.

unless I can shake myself free of my dog, my flag, of my desk, my mind, I find life a bit of a drag. Not always, mind you. Usually I'm like my frying pan useful, graceful, sturdy and with no caper, no plan.

I'll Vacuum up my stale hair, I'll pay all my neighbors' bad debts, I'll write a poem called Yellow and put my lips down to drink it up.

There once was a miller with a daughter as lovely as a grape. He told the king that she could spin gold out of common straw. The king summoned the girl and locked her in a room full of straw and told her to spin it into gold or she would die like a criminal. Poor grape with no one to pick. Luscious and round and sleek. Poor thing. To die and never see Brooklyn. (Rumpelstiltskin)

And tonight our skin, our bones, that have survived our fathers, will meet, delicate in the hold, fastened together in an intricate lock. Then one of us will shout, "My need is more desperate!" and I will eat you slowly with kisses even though the killer in you has gotten out.

Daylight is nobody's friend. God comes in like a landlord and flashes on his brassy lamp.

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.

I think of myself as writing for one person, that one perfect reader who understands and loves.

Poor thing. To die and never see Brooklyn.

Oh sharp diamond, my mother! I could not count the cost of all your faces, your moods that present that I lost. Sweet girl, my deathbed, my jewel-fingered lady...

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

I tell you what you’ll never really know: all the medical hypothesis that explained my brain will never be as true as these struck leaves letting go.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Let there be a heaven so that man may outlive his grasses.

I see myself as one would see another. I have been cut in two.

There is joy in all: in the hair I brush each morning, in the Cannon towel, newly washed, that I rub my body with each morning.

Inside many of us is a small old man who wants to get out.

Suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build.

The Witch's Life" When I was a child there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story window from behind the wrinkled curtains and sometimes she would open the window and yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp and a voice like a boulder. I think of her sometimes now and wonder if I am becoming her.

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