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Now that I have written many words, and let out so many loves, for so many, and been altogether what I always was a woman of excess, of zeal and greed, I find the effort useless.

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
Emotion
Zeal
Effort
Altogether
Written
Excess
Words
Greed
Woman
Useless
Find
Loves
Many
Poet
Always
Poetry

More quotes by Anne Sexton

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I'm the crazy one who thinks that words reach people.
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The sea is mother-death and she is a mighty female, the one who wins, the one who sucks us all up.
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Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself, Counting this row and that row of moccasins Waiting on the silent shelf.
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In an old time there was a king as wise as a dictionary.
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Take adultery or theft. Merely sins. It is evil who dines on the soul, stretching out its long bone tongue. It is evil who tweezers my heart, picking out its atomic worms.
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For I could not read or speak and on the long nights I could not turn the moon off or count the lights of cars across the ceiling.
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To tell the truth days are all the same size and words aren't much company.
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Frog has no nerves. Frog is as old as a cockroach. Frog is my father's genitals. Frog is a malformed doorknob. Frog is a soft bag of green.
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It is in the small things we see it. The child's first step, as awesome as an earthquake. The first time you rode a bike, wallowing up the sidewalk.
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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.
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I was only sitting here in my white study with the awful black words pushing me around.
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At six I lived in a graveyard full of dolls, avoiding myself, my body, the suspect in its grotesque house.
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The soul was not cured, it was as full as a clothes closet of dresses that did not fit.
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Women tell time by the body. They are like clocks. They are always fastened to the earth, listening for its small animal noises.
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Images are probably the most important part of the poem. First of all you want to tell a story, but images are what are going to shore it up and get to the heart of the matter.
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And within the house ashes are being stuffed into my marriage, fury is lapping the walls, dishes crack on the shelves, a strangler needs my throat, the daughter has ceased to eat anything.
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Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.
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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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God went out of me as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun became a latrine.
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And thus Snow White became the prince's bride. The wicked queen was invited to the wedding feast and when she arrived there were red-hot iron shoes, in the manner of red-hot roller skates, clamped upon her feet.
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