Anne Sexton Quotes

“That’s what I do: I make coffee and occasionally succumb to suicidal nihilism. But you shouldn’t worry — poetry is still first. Cigarettes and alcohol follow”
― Anne Sexton

“Poetry led me by the hand out of madness.”
― Anne Sexton

“Some women marry houses.”
― Anne Sexton

“I should be working and not writing you. But this is a missing you, where are you, hello and necessary for my soul.”
― Anne Sexton, Anne Sexton: A Self-Portrait in Letters

“I’d won the world
but like a
forsaken explorer,
I’d lost
my map.”
― Anne Sexton

“And there you are. And I liked you a lot today. A lot. And I want to talk to you. Selfishly.”
― Anne Sexton, No Evil Star: Selected Essays, Interviews, and Prose

“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.”
― Anne Sexton

“We were fair game
but we have kept out of the cesspool.
We are strong.
We are the good ones.
Do not discover us
for we lie together all in green
like pond weeds.
Hold me, my young dear, hold me.”
― Anne Sexton

“There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
Today God gives milk
and I have the pail”
― Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God

“I have a room of my own.
Rain drops onto it. Rain drops down like worms
From the trees onto my frontal bone.
Haunted, always haunted by rain, the room affirms
The words that I will make alone.
— Mother And Jack and The Rain.”
― Anne Sexton, Live or Die

“Perhaps the sadness here is that Plath and Sexton somehow could not quite gather the strength to truly believe in their self-worth, and in the end neither gave themselves time to.”
― Gail Crowther, Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton

“I asked a poet friend one time what it was that poets did and he thought a while, and then he said ‘They extend the language.’ I thought that was neat, but it didn’t make me grateful in my bones for poets. Language extenders I can take or leave alone.

Anne Sexton does a deeper favor for me: she domesticates my terror, examines it and describes it, teaches it some tricks which will amuse me, then lets it gallop wild in my forest once more.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

“KELİMELER

Kelimelere dikkat et,
Özellikle mucizevi olanlara.
Mucizevi olanlar için en iyisini yaparız,
Bazen böcek sürüsü gibi toplanırlar
Sokmazlar ama bir öpücük bırakırlar.
Parmaklar kadar iyi olabilirler.
Oturduğun kaya kadar güvenilir...
Aynı zamanda hem papatyalar hem de yaralar gibi...

Sözcüklere aşığım, evet.
Tavandan sarkan kuğular onlar,
Kucağımda duran altı kutsal portakal,
Ağaçlar onlar, yazın bacakları,
Ve güneş, onun tutkulu yüzü.

Genellikle yanılttılar beni.
Söylemek istediğim çok şey vardı,
Çok fazla hikaye, görüntü, atasözü ve saire...
Ama kelimeler yeterince iyi değil.
Yanlış olanları öptü beni.

Bazen bir kartal gibi uçarım
Ama bir çalıkuşunun kanatlarıyla.
Yine de dikkat etmeye çalışırım
Ve onlara nazik davranmaya.
Kelimeler ve yumurtalar dikkatle taşınmalıdır.
Bir kere kırıldılar mı, tamiri imkansızdır.”
― Anne Sexton

“You will survive your terror, and come out grand, simply grand.”
― Anne Sexton, from a letter to Claire S. Degener featured in A Self-Portrait in Letters