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I am not at home in myself. I am my own stranger.
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
Stranger
Home
Self
More quotes by Anne Sexton
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
Of course the New Testament is very small. Its mouth opens four times as out-of-date as a prehistoric monster, yet somehow man-made.
Anne Sexton
What's the point of fighting the dollars when all you need is a warm bed? When the dog barks you let him in. All we need is someone to let us in. And one other thing: to consider the lilies in the field.
Anne Sexton
This is what poems are: with mercy for the greedy, they are the tongue's wrangle, the world's pottage, the rat's star.
Anne Sexton
the marriage twists, holds firm, a sailor's knot.
Anne Sexton
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
the heart, this child of myself that resides in the flesh, this ultimate signature of the me, the start of my blindness and sleep, builds a death crèche.
Anne Sexton
unless I can shake myself free of my dog, my flag, of my desk, my mind, I find life a bit of a drag. Not always, mind you. Usually I'm like my frying pan useful, graceful, sturdy and with no caper, no plan.
Anne Sexton
As for me, I am a watercolor. I wash off.
Anne Sexton
Yesterday I did not want to be borrowed but this is the typewriter that sits before me and love is where yesterday is at.
Anne Sexton
stop the darkness and its amputations and find the real McCoy in the private holiness of my hands.
Anne Sexton
My objects dream and wear new costumes, compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands and the sea that bangs in my throat.
Anne Sexton
Oh thumb, I want a drink it is dark, where are the big people, when will I get there...?
Anne Sexton
My sleeping pill is white. It is a splendid pearl it floats me out of myself, my stung skin as alien as a loose bolt of cloth.
Anne Sexton
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
I am a collection of dismantled almosts.
Anne Sexton
God went out of me as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun became a latrine.
Anne Sexton
Home is my Bethlehem, my succoring shelter, my mental hospital, my wife, my dam, my husband, my sir, my womb, my skull.
Anne Sexton
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
I can only sign over everything, the house, the dog, the ladders, the jewels, the soul, the family tree, the mailbox. Then I can sleep. Maybe.
Anne Sexton