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I am torn in two but I will conquer myself.

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
Two
Self
Torn
Conquer

More quotes by Anne Sexton

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All considerations for these human remains! They must have an escort! They are classified!
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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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I suffer for birds and fireflies but not frogs, she said, and threw him across the room. Kaboom! Like a genie out of a samovar, a handsome prince arose in the corner of the bedroom.
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You lay, a small knuckle on my white bed lay, that fist like a snail, small and strong at my breast. Your lips are animals you are fed with love. At first, hunger is not wrong.
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There is no word for time. Today we will not think to number another summer or watch its white bird into the ground.
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I find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with last year’s cupful and downward into a decade’s quart and downward into a lifetime’s ocean. I alternate treading water and deadman’s float.
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Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.
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Once I was a couple. I was my own king and queen with cheese and bread and rosé on the rocks of Rockport.
Anne Sexton
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Father, you died once, salted down at fifty-nine, packed down like a big snow angel, wasn't that enough?
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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.
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But my future is a secret. / It is as shy as a mole.
Anne Sexton
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I am not at home in myself. I am my own stranger.
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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.
Anne Sexton
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this is no dream just my oily life where the people are alibis and the street is unfindable for an entire lifetime.
Anne Sexton
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Oh, darling, let your body in, let it tie you in, in comfort.
Anne Sexton
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I like you your eyes are full of language. [Letter to Anne Clarke, July 3, 1964.]
Anne Sexton
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My business is words. Words are like labels, or coins, or better, like swarming bees.
Anne Sexton
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unless I can shake myself free of my dog, my flag, of my desk, my mind, I find life a bit of a drag. Not always, mind you. Usually I'm like my frying pan useful, graceful, sturdy and with no caper, no plan.
Anne Sexton
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I keep feeling that there isn't one poem being written by any one of us - or a book or anything like that. The whole life of us writers, the whole product I guess I mean, is the one long poem - a community effort if you will. It's all the same poem. It doesn't belong to any one writer - it's God's poem perhaps. Or God's people's poem.
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All the oxygen of the world was in them. All the feet of the babies of the world were in them. All the crotches of the angels of the world were in them. All the morning kisses of Philadelphia were in them.
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