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All I am is the trick of words writing themselves.

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
Writing
Trick
Tricks
Words

More quotes by Anne Sexton

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Now I am just an elderly lady who is full of spleen, who humps around greater Boston in a God-awful hat, who never lived and yet outlived her time, hating men and dogs and Democrats.
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Put your mouthful of words away and come with me to watch the lilies open in such a field, growing there like yachts, slowly steering their petals without nurses or clocks.
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Yes, I know. Death sits with his key in my lock. Not one day is taken for granted. Even nursery rhymes have put me in hock.
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The man inside of woman ties a knot so that they will never again be separate.
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I am torn in two but I will conquer myself.
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The tongue, the Chinese say, is like a sharp knife: it kills without drawing blood.
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Maybe I am becoming a hermit, opening the door for only a few special animals? Maybe my skull is too crowded and it has no opening through which to feed it soup?
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The trouble with therapy is that it makes life go backwards.
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I'll Vacuum up my stale hair, I'll pay all my neighbors' bad debts, I'll write a poem called Yellow and put my lips down to drink it up.
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life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack.
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But my future is a secret. / It is as shy as a mole.
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I am stuffing your mouth with your promises and watching you vomit them out upon my face.
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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 Its mouth opens four times as out-of-date as a prehistoric monster, yet somehow man-made.
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Sometimes I fly like an eagle but with the wings of a wren
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Even so, I must admire your skill. You are so gracefully insane.
Anne Sexton
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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.
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I try to take care and be gentle to them. Words and eggs must be handled with care. Once broken they are impossible things to repair.
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Our eyes are full of terrible confessions.
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So I won't hang around in my hospital shift, repeating The Black Mass and all of it. I say Live, Live because of the sun, the dream, the excitable gift.
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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