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

Anne Sexton

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Anne Sexton
Age: 45 †
Born: 1928
Born: November 9
Died: 1974
Died: October 4
Poet
Writer
Newton
Massachusetts
Anne Gray Harvey
Soul
Hard
Life
Ears
Creativity
Close
Listen
Inspirational
Beautiful

More quotes by Anne Sexton

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Don’t worry if they say you’re crazy. They said that about me and yet I was saner than all of them. I knew. No matter. You know. Insane or sane, you know. It’s a good thing to know - no matter what they call it.
Anne Sexton
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I remember the stink of the liverwurst. How I was put on a platter and laid between the mayonnaise and the bacon. The rhythm of the refrigerator had been disturbed.
Anne Sexton
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I am out of practice at living. You are as brave as a motorcycle.
Anne Sexton
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Images are probably the most important part of the poem. First of all you want to tell a story, but images are what are going to shore it up and get to the heart of the matter.
Anne Sexton
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My business is words. Words are like labels, or coins, or better, like swarming bees.
Anne Sexton
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In a dream you are never eighty.
Anne Sexton
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No matter whose bed you die in the bed will be yours for your voyage onto the surgical andiron of God.
Anne Sexton
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Someone is dead. Even the trees know it, those poor old dancers who come on lewdly, all pea-green scarfs and spine pole.
Anne Sexton
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Evil is maybe lying to God. Or better, lying to love.
Anne Sexton
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I lay there silently, hoarding my small dignity. I did not ask about the gate or the closet. I did not question the bedtime ritual where, on the cold bathroom tiles, I was spread out daily and examined for flaws. I did not know that my bones, those solids, those pieces of sculpture would not splinter.
Anne Sexton
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I grow old on my bitterness.
Anne Sexton
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I hoard books. They are people who do not leave.
Anne Sexton
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I am teaching... This year it's kind of like having a love affair with a rhinoceros.
Anne Sexton
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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...
Anne Sexton
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Thumbs grow into my throat. I wear slaps like a spot of rouge.
Anne Sexton
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I am not at home in myself. I am my own stranger.
Anne Sexton
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Please God, we're all right here. Please leave us alone. Don't send death in his fat red suit and his ho-ho baritone.
Anne Sexton
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It's a little mad, but I believe I am many people. When I am writing a poem, I feel I am the person who should have written it.
Anne Sexton
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I'm hunting for the truth. It might be a kind of poetic truth, and not just a factual one, because behind everything that happens to you, there is another truth, a secret life.
Anne Sexton
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think of innocent Icarus who is doing quite well: larger than a sail, over the fog and the blast of the plushy ocean, he goes. Admire his wings!
Anne Sexton