Quote

Need is not quite belief.

Anne Sexton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Anne Sexton
Age: 45 †
Born: 1928
Born: November 9
Died: 1974
Died: October 4
Poet
Writer
Newton
Massachusetts
Anne Gray Harvey
Need
Needs
Believe
Quite
Belief
Reality

More quotes by Anne Sexton

Image
And tonight our skin, our bones, that have survived our fathers, will meet, delicate in the hold, fastened together in an intricate lock. Then one of us will shout, My need is more desperate! and I will eat you slowly with kisses even though the killer in you has gotten out.
Anne Sexton
Image
I would like to think that no one would die anymore if we all believed in daisies but the worms know better, don't they? They slide into the ear of a corpse and listen to his great sigh.
Anne Sexton
Image
Death's in the good-bye.
Anne Sexton
Image
I am alone here in my own mind. There is no map and there is no road. It is one of a kind just as yours is.
Anne Sexton
Image
I have a black look I do not like. It is a mask I try on. I migrate toward it and its frog sits on my lips and defecates.
Anne Sexton
Image
With this pen I take in hand my selves and with these dead disciples I will grapple. Though rain curses the window let the poem be made.
Anne Sexton
Image
Dead drunk is the term I think of, insensible, neither cool nor warm, without a head or a foot. To be drunk is to be intimate with a fool.
Anne Sexton
Image
Poems aren't postcards to send home.
Anne Sexton
Image
Poetry to me is prayer.
Anne Sexton
Image
I leave you, home, when I'm ripped from the doorstep by commerce or fate. Then I submit to the awful subway of the world.
Anne Sexton
Image
The sky breaks. It sags and breathes upon my face. in the presence of mine enemies, mine enemies The world is full of enemies. There is no safe place.
Anne Sexton
Image
Pulling off the fat diamond engagement ring, pulling off the elopement wedding ring, and holding them, clicking them in thumb and forefinger, the indent of twenty-five years, like a tiny rip leaving its mark.
Anne Sexton
Image
Thumbs grow into my throat. I wear slaps like a spot of rouge.
Anne Sexton
Image
I've grown tired of love You are the trouble with me I watch you walk right by
Anne Sexton
Image
Frog has no nerves. Frog is as old as a cockroach. Frog is my father's genitals. Frog is a malformed doorknob. Frog is a soft bag of green.
Anne Sexton
Image
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
Image
The trouble with therapy is that it makes life go backwards.
Anne Sexton
Image
life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack.
Anne Sexton
Image
I suffer for birds and fireflies but not frogs, she said, and threw him across the room. Kaboom! Like a genie out of a samovar, a handsome prince arose in the corner of the bedroom.
Anne Sexton
Image
I would like to bury all the hating eyes under the sand somewhere.
Anne Sexton