Quotes by Anne Sexton

About Anne Sexton:

Anne Sexton was an American poet, known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book Live or Die. Themes of her poetry include her long battle against depression and mania, suicidal tendencies, and various intimate details from her private life, including her relationships with her husband and children.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

God went out of me as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun became a latrine. God went out of my fingers. They became stone. My body became a side of mutton and despair roamed the slaughterhouse.

Anne Sexton

Anne, I don't want to live. . . . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can't Live It. I can't even explain. I know how silly it sounds . . . but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it. Ay that's the rub. I am like a...

Anne Sexton

I feel unspeakably lonely. And I feel - drained. It is a blank state of mind and soul I cannot describe to you as I think it would not make any difference. Also it is a very private feeling I have - that of melting into a perpetual nervous breakdown....

Anne Sexton

exI feel unspeakably lonely. And I feel - drained. It is a blank state of mind and soul I cannot describe to you as I think it would not make any difference. Also it is a very private feeling I have - that of melting into a perpetual nervous breakdow...

Anne Sexton

Clover['s] eyes are full of language.

Anne Sexton

Quite collected at cocktail parties, meanwhile in my head I'm undergoing open-heart surgery.

Anne Sexton

Give me your skin as sheer as a cobweb, let me open it up and listen in and scoop out the dark.

Anne Sexton

Each night I am nailed into place and forget who I am. Daddy? That's another kind of prison. It's not the prince at all, but my father drunkeningly bends over my bed, circling the abyss like a shark, my father thick upon me like some sleeping jellyfi...

Anne Sexton

It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.

Anne Sexton

God owns heaven but He craves the earth.

Anne Sexton

God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.

Anne Sexton

Even without wars, life is dangerous.

Anne Sexton

The joy that isn't shared dies young.

Anne Sexton

Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.

Anne Sexton

Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.

Anne Sexton

In a dream you are never eighty.

Anne Sexton

Need is not quite belief.

Anne Sexton

The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that's saying a lot.

Anne Sexton

I am not immortal. Faustus and I are the also-ran.

Anne Sexton

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

Author Bio

  • NameAnne Sexton
  • Descriptionpoet from the United States
  • AliasesAnne Gray Harvey
  • BornNovember 9, 1928
  • DiedOctober 4, 1974
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionPoet; Author
  • WorksLive Or Die
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; Pulitzer Prize For Poetry