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My life has appeared unclothed in court, detail by detail, death-bone witness by death-bone witness, and I was shamed at the verdict.

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
Life
Detail
Privacy
Witness
Bones
Details
Shamed
Regret
Verdict
Court
Bone
Death
Appeared

More quotes by Anne Sexton

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Please God, we're all right here. Please leave us alone. Don't send death in his fat red suit and his ho-ho baritone.
Anne Sexton
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we do not explain my husband's insane abuse and we do not say why your wild-haired wife has fled or that my father opened like a walnut and then was dead. Your palms fold over me like knees. Love is the only use.
Anne Sexton
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I would sell my life to avoid the pain that begins in the crib with its bars or perhaps with your first breath when the planets drill your future into you.
Anne Sexton
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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.
Anne Sexton
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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.
Anne Sexton
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As it has been said: Love and a cough cannot be concealed. Even a small cough. Even a small love.
Anne Sexton
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Images are the heart of poetry ... You're not a poet without imagery.
Anne Sexton
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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.
Anne Sexton
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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
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The fish are naked. The fish are always awake. They are the color of old spoons and caramels.
Anne Sexton
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The day of fire is coming, the thrush will fly ablaze like a little sky rocket.
Anne Sexton
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I am teaching... This year it's kind of like having a love affair with a rhinoceros.
Anne Sexton
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life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack.
Anne Sexton
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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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If you meet a cross-eyed person you must plunge into the grass, alongside the chilly ants, fish through the green fingernails and come up with the four-leaf clover.
Anne Sexton
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Love your self's self where it lives.
Anne Sexton
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Somebody who should have been born is gone. Yes, woman, such logic will lead to loss without death. Or say what you meant, you coward . . . this baby that I bleed.
Anne Sexton
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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.
Anne Sexton
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Blind with love, my daughter has cried nightly for horses, those long-necked marchers and churners that she has mastered, any and all, reigning them in like a circus hand.
Anne Sexton
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I burn the way money burns.
Anne Sexton