Anne Sexton Quotes

The children are all crying in their pens
and the surf carries their cries away.
They are old men who have seen too much,
their mouths are full of dirty clothes,
the tongues poverty, tears like puss.
The surf pushes their cries back.
Listen.

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

Let me hold your heart like a flower lest it bloom and collapse.

At night the bats will beat on the trees, knowing it all, seeing what they sensed all day....

Fee-fi-fo-fum, now I'm borrowed, now I'm numb.

We make a stage set out of my past
and stuff painted puppets into it.
We make a bridge toward my future
and I cry to you: 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.

حذار العقل،
لأنه يعرف الكثير ولا يعرف شيئّا
وسيتركك مُعلّقًا بالمقلوب،
تثرثر المعرفة بينما يسقط
قلبك من فمك

لاحقاً،
إذا ما حدثَ وهويتِ إلى مداركِ اليأس،
فلقد فعلت ذلك وحدك.

"Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself... ("You, Doctor Martin")"

He said loudly ‘I am not dying’ and I said ‘for me you are.

As they say in the movies, I got here the hard way, with no education and no dough, and whatever I am I am because I wrote it.

Yes I try to kill myself in small amounts, an innocuous occupation. Actually I’m hung up on it.

I am ugly,
submerged in my own past
and my own madness

From the Garden”

Come, my beloved,
consider the lilies.
We are of little faith.
We talk too much.
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.
Let us consider the view:
a house where white clouds
decorate the muddy halls.
Oh, put away your good words
and your bad words. Spit out
your words like stones!
Come here! Come here!
Come eat my pleasant fruits.

It was also my violent heart that broke.