Quote

I can only sign over everything, the house, the dog, the ladders, the jewels, the soul, the family tree, the mailbox. Then I can sleep. Maybe.

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
Family
Mailboxes
House
Ladders
Soul
Jewels
Everything
Sign
Dog
Tree
Sleep
Maybe
Mailbox

More quotes by Anne Sexton

Image
God is only mocked by believers.
Anne Sexton
Image
Once upon a time we were all born, popped out like jelly rolls forgetting our fishdom, the pleasuring seas, the country of comfort, spanked into the oxygens of death.
Anne Sexton
Image
Letters are false really - they are expressions of the way you wish you were instead of the way you are.
Anne Sexton
Image
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.
Anne Sexton
Image
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
Image
I have a black look I do not like. It is a mask I try on. I migrate toward it and its frog sits on my lips and defecates.
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
Suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build.
Anne Sexton
Image
When someone kisses someone or flushes the toilet it is my other who sits in a ball and cries. My other beats a tin drum in my heart. My other hangs up laundry as I try to sleep. My other cries and cries and cries when I put on a cocktail dress.
Anne Sexton
Image
My objects dream and wear new costumes, compelled to, it seems, by all the words in my hands and the sea that bangs in my throat.
Anne Sexton
Image
Of course the New Testament is very small. Its mouth opens four times as out-of-date as a prehistoric monster, yet somehow man-made.
Anne Sexton
Image
Big heart, wide as a watermelon, but wise as birth, there is so much abundance in the people I have.
Anne Sexton
Image
I've grown tired of love You are the trouble with me I watch you walk right by
Anne Sexton
Image
At six I lived in a graveyard full of dolls, avoiding myself, my body, the suspect in its grotesque house.
Anne Sexton
Image
Someone is dead. Even the trees know it, those poor old dancers who come on lewdly, all pea-green scarfs and spine pole.
Anne Sexton
Image
I am a collection of dismantled almosts.
Anne Sexton
Image
There is an animal inside me, clutching fast to my heart, a huge crab.
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
Some women marry houses. It's another kind of skin it has a heart, a mouth, a liver and bowel movements.
Anne Sexton
Image
In a letter (no matter how quickly it is written or honestly or freely or lovingly) it is more possible to be loving and lovable, more possible to reach out and to take in ... I feel I have somehow deceived you into thinking this is really a human relationship. It is a letter relationship between humans.
Anne Sexton