Anne Sexton Quotes

She is so naked and singular
She is the sum of yourself and your dream.
Climb her like a monument, step after step.
She is solid.
As for me, I am a watercolor.
I wash off.

(For My Lover, Returning To His Wife)

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

The soul was not cured,
it was as full as a clothes closet
of dresses that did not fit.

I begin again, Dr.Y,
this neverland journal,
full of my own sense of filth.
Why else keep a journal, if not
to examine your own filth?

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 end.

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.

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.

"أتحبني؟"

سألتُ سترته الزرقاء.
لا جواب.
كان الصمت ينهمر من دفاتره.
ثم سقط من لسانه
وجاء وجلس بيننا
وخنق حلقي
وذبح يقيني
مزّق السجائر في فمي.
تبادلنا كلمات عمياء
ولم أبك،
ولم أتوسّل،
تنفّست الظلمة في قلبي،
وذلك الهواء الذي كان جميلًا
تحول إلى فرن غاز.

أتحبني؟
يا للعبث!
أي سؤال هو هذا؟
أي صمت هو هذا؟
ولمَ أمكث هنا
محاولة تفسير صمته؟

They could not listen.
They could not stop.
What they did was the death dance.
What they did would do them in.

I’m in pain because the day is ending and somehow I am never healing.

I am mad the way young girls are mad,
with an offering, an offering.

I am so tired of that old suffering.

To love another is something like prayer and can't be planned, you just fall into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.

"Welcome Morning"

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,
in the chapel of eggs I cook
each morning,
in the outcry from the kettle
that heats my coffee
each morning,
in the spoon and the chair
that cry "hello there, Anne"
each morning,
in the godhead of the table
that I set my silver, plate, cup upon
each morning.

All this is God,
right here in my pea-green house
each morning
and I mean,
though often forget,
to give thanks,
to faint down by the kitchen table
in a prayer of rejoicing
as the holy birds at the kitchen window
peck into their marriage of seeds.

So while I think of it,
let me paint a thank-you on my palm
for this God, this laughter of the morning,
lest it go unspoken.

The Joy that isn't shared, I've heard,
dies young.

I’m lost. And it’s my own fault. It’s about time I figured out that I can’t ask people to keep me found.

You fell, she said, just remember you fell.
I fell, is all he told the doctors
in the big hospital. A nice lady came
and asked him questions but because
he didn't want to be sent away he said, I fell.
He never said anything else although he could talk fine.