Quote

Our children tremble in their teen-age cribs, whirling off on a thumb or a motorcycle.

Anne Sexton

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Anne Sexton
Age: 45 †
Born: 1928
Born: November 9
Died: 1974
Died: October 4
Poet
Writer
Newton
Massachusetts
Anne Gray Harvey
Motorcycle
Thumbs
Adolescence
Maturity
Cribs
Age
Whirling
Children
Tremble
Thumb
Teen

More quotes by Anne Sexton

Image
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.
Anne Sexton
Image
All I am is the trick of words writing themselves.
Anne Sexton
Image
In an old time there was a king as wise as a dictionary.
Anne Sexton
Image
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
Image
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.
Anne Sexton
Image
Daylight is nobody's friend. God comes in like a landlord and flashes on his brassy lamp.
Anne Sexton
Image
True. There is a beautiful Jesus. He is frozen to his bones like a chunk of beef. How desperately he wanted to pull his arms in! How desperately I touch his vertical and horizontal axes! But I can't. Need is not quite belief.
Anne Sexton
Image
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
Image
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.
Anne Sexton
Image
God went out of me as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun became a latrine.
Anne Sexton
Image
Perhaps I am no one. True, I have a body and I cannot escape from it. I would like to fly out of my head, but that is out of the question.
Anne Sexton
Image
I am stuffing your mouth with your promises and watching you vomit them out upon my face.
Anne Sexton
Image
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
Image
Loving me with my shoes off means loving my long brown legs, sweet dears, as good as spoons and my feet, those two children let out to play naked.
Anne Sexton
Image
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
Image
The sky breaks. It sags and breathes upon my face. in the presence of mine enemies, mine enemies The world is full of enemies. There is no safe place.
Anne Sexton
Image
My husband sings Baa Baa black sheep and we pretend that all's certain and good, that the marriage won't end.
Anne Sexton
Image
To tell the truth days are all the same size and words aren't much company.
Anne Sexton
Image
Oh thumb, I want a drink it is dark, where are the big people, when will I get there...?
Anne Sexton
Image
What's missing is the eyeballs in each of us, but it doesn't matter because you've got the bucks, the bucks, the bucks.
Anne Sexton