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Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone.

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
Bite
Bites
Stone
Till
Bread
Stones

More quotes by Anne Sexton

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Thief!- how did you crawl into, crawl down alone into the death I wanted so badly and for so long.
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Talk to me about sadness. I talk about it too much in my own head but I never mind others talking about it either I occasionally feel like I tremendously need others to talk about it as well.
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It was as if a morning-glory had bloomed in her throat, and all that blue and small pollen ate into my heart, violent and religious
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I hoard books. They are people who do not leave.
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The tongue, the Chinese say, is like a sharp knife: it kills without drawing blood.
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But my future is a secret. / It is as shy as a mole.
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Then all this became history. Your hand found mine. Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. Oh, my carpenter, the fingers are rebuilt. They dance with yours.
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I find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with last year’s cupful and downward into a decade’s quart and downward into a lifetime’s ocean. I alternate treading water and deadman’s float.
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We are America. We are the coffin fillers. We are the grocers of death. We pack them in crates like cauliflowers.
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.
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Father, you died once, salted down at fifty-nine, packed down like a big snow angel, wasn't that enough?
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After a disaster strikes, it can be very devastating and very challenging. You're going to need a lot of strength and energy, and the American Red Cross suggests you go for the high protein items.
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Psychiatry is a dirty mirror.
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I love the word warm. It is almost unbearable-- so moist and breathlike.
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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...
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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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Rocks crumble, make new forms, oceans move the continents, mountains rise up and down like ghosts yet all is natural, all is change.
Anne Sexton
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Our checks are pale. Our wallets are invalids. Past due, past due, is what our bills are saying and yet we kiss in every corner, scuffing the dust and the cat. Love rises like bread as we go bust.
Anne Sexton
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Put your ear down close to your soul and listen hard.
Anne Sexton