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Here in the hospital, I say,that is not my body, not my body.I am not here for the doctorsto read like a recipe.

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
Hospital
Hospitals
Read
Body
Like
Recipe
Recipes

More quotes by Anne Sexton

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Cinderella and the prince lived, they say, happily ever after, like two dolls in a museum case never bothered by diapers or dust, never arguing over the timing of an egg, never telling the same story twice.
Anne Sexton
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God is only mocked by believers.
Anne Sexton
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You cutting the lawn, fixing the machines, all this leprous day and then more vodka, more soda and the pond forgiving our bodies, the pond sucking out the throb.
Anne Sexton
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Everyone in me is a bird I am beating all my wings
Anne Sexton
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Now I am going back And I have ripped my hand From your hand as I said I would And I have made it this far.
Anne Sexton
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When they turn the sun on again I'll plant children under it, I'll light up my soul with a match and let it sing.
Anne Sexton
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we do not explain my husband's insane abuse and we do not say why your wild-haired wife has fled or that my father opened like a walnut and then was dead. Your palms fold over me like knees. Love is the only use.
Anne Sexton
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The boys and girls are one tonight. They unbutton blouses. They unzip flies. They take off shoes. They turn off the light. The glimmering creatures are full of lies. They are eating each other. They are overfed. At night, alone, I marry the bed.
Anne Sexton
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Sometimes I fly like an eagle but with the wings of a wren
Anne Sexton
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All the oxygen of the world was in them. All the feet of the babies of the world were in them. All the crotches of the angels of the world were in them. All the morning kisses of Philadelphia were in them.
Anne Sexton
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Being kissed on the back of the knee is a moth at the windowscreen.
Anne Sexton
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The body is a damn hard thing to kill.
Anne Sexton
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Give me your skin as sheer as a cobweb, let me open it up and listen in and scoop out the dark.
Anne Sexton
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Big heart, wide as a watermelon, but wise as birth, there is so much abundance in the people I have.
Anne Sexton
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To be without God is to be a snake / who wants to swallow an elephant.
Anne Sexton
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Bless all useful objects, the spoons made of bone, the mattress I cook my dreams upon, the typewriter that is my church with an altar of keys always waiting.
Anne Sexton
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The silence is death. It comes each day with its shock to sit on my shoulder, a white bird, and peck at the black eyes and the vibrating red muscle of my mouth.
Anne Sexton
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You lay, a small knuckle on my white bed lay, that fist like a snail, small and strong at my breast. Your lips are animals you are fed with love. At first, hunger is not wrong.
Anne Sexton
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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.
Anne Sexton
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Jesus saw the multitudes were hungry and He said, Oh Lord, send down a short-order cook.
Anne Sexton