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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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And we are magic talking to itself, noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins forgotten. Am I still lost? Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself
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We are America. We are the coffin fillers. We are the grocers of death. We pack them in crates like cauliflowers.
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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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I burn the way money burns.
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I am younger each year at the first snow.
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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.
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Suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build.
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O fallen angel, the companion within me, whisper something holy before you pinch me into the grave.
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Oh sharp diamond, my mother! I could not count the cost of all your faces, your moods that present that I lost. Sweet girl, my deathbed, my jewel-fingered lady...
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One of my secret instructions to myself as a poet is Whatever you do, don't be boring.
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I remember the stink of the liverwurst. How I was put on a platter and laid between the mayonnaise and the bacon. The rhythm of the refrigerator had been disturbed.
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Those moments before a poem comes, when the heightened awareness comes over you, and you realize a poem is buried there somewhere, you prepare yourself. I run around, you know, kind of skipping around the house, marvelous elation. It’s as though I could fly.
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[I] have fantasies of killing myself and thus being the powerful one not the powerless one.
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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.
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Oh, darling, let your body in, let it tie you in, in comfort.
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Everyone has left me except my muse, that good nurse. She stays in my hand, a mild white mouse.
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There is a good look that I wear like a blood clot. I have sewn it over my left breast. I have made a vocation of it.
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you see, we live in a cold climate and are not permitted to kiss on the street so I made up a song that wasn't true. I made up a song called Marriage.
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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.
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For forty days, for forty nights Jesus put one foot in front of the other and the man he carried, if it was a man, became heavier and heavier.
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