Quote

Images are the heart of poetry ... You're not a poet without imagery.

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
Images
Poet
Poetry
Without
Heart
Imagery

More quotes by Anne Sexton

Image
I am teaching... This year it's kind of like having a love affair with a rhinoceros.
Anne Sexton
Image
The place I live in is a kind of maze and I keep seeking the exit or the home.
Anne Sexton
Image
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
Image
I’m lost. And it’s my own fault. It’s about time I figured out that I can’t ask people to keep me found.
Anne Sexton
Image
My ideas are a curse. They spring from a radical discontent with the awful order of things. I play clown. I play carpenter. I play nurse. I play witch.
Anne Sexton
Image
Every time I get happy the Nana-hex comes through. Birds turn into plumber's tools, a sonnet turns into a dirty joke, a wind turns into a tracheotomy, a boat turns into a corpse.
Anne Sexton
Image
I'm an empress. I wear an apron. My typewriter writes. It didn't break the way it warned. Even crazy, I'm as nice as a chocolate bar.
Anne Sexton
Image
The soul was not cured, it was as full as a clothes closet of dresses that did not fit.
Anne Sexton
Image
I grow old on my bitterness.
Anne Sexton
Image
Be careful of words, / ... they can be both daisies and bruises.
Anne Sexton
Image
But even in a telephone booth evil can seep out of the receiver and we must cover it with a mattress, and then tear it from its roots and bury it, bury it.
Anne Sexton
Image
And the aura of you remains, remains, remains...
Anne Sexton
Image
The tongue, the Chinese say, is like a sharp knife: it kills without drawing blood.
Anne Sexton
Image
Yes I try to kill myself in small amounts, an innocuous occupation. Actually I'm hung up on it.
Anne Sexton
Image
The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that's saying a lot.
Anne Sexton
Image
Writers are such phonies: they sometimes have wise insights but they don't live by them at all. That's what writers are like...you think they know something, but usually they are just messes.
Anne Sexton
Image
I think of myself as writing for one person, that one perfect reader who understands and loves.
Anne Sexton
Image
Then God spoke to me and said: People say only good things about Christmas. If they want to say something bad, they whisper.
Anne Sexton
Image
As a writer one has to take the chance on being a fool.
Anne Sexton
Image
I have forgiven all the old actors for dying. A new one comes on with the same lines, like large white growths, in his mouth. The dancers come on from the wings, perfectly mated.
Anne Sexton