Quote

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.

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
Part
Firsts
Shore
Matter
Poem
First
Images
Important
Probably
Heart
Story
Going
Tell
Stories

More quotes by Anne Sexton

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Some women marry houses. It's another kind of skin it has a heart, a mouth, a liver and bowel movements.
Anne Sexton
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The stars are pears that no one can reach, even for a wedding. Perhaps for a death.
Anne Sexton
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A woman who writes feels too much.
Anne Sexton
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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.
Anne Sexton
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The snow has quietness in it no songs, no smells, no shouts or traffic. When I speak my own voice shocks me.
Anne Sexton
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Well, one gets out of bed and the planets don't always hiss or muck up the day, each day.
Anne Sexton
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My ideas are a curse. They spring from a radical discontent with the awful order of things. I play clown. I play carpenter. I play nurse. I play witch.
Anne Sexton
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Let there be a heaven so that man may outlive his grasses.
Anne Sexton
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Take your foot out of the graveyard, they are busy being dead.
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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Frog has no nerves. Frog is as old as a cockroach. Frog is my father's genitals. Frog is a malformed doorknob. Frog is a soft bag of green.
Anne Sexton
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I, in my brand new body, which was not a woman's yet, told the stars my questions and thought God could really see the heat and the painted light, elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.
Anne Sexton
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The ground has on its clothes. The trees poke out of sheets and each branch wears the sock of God.
Anne Sexton
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Need is not quite belief.
Anne Sexton
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I raise my pelvis to God so that it may know the truth of how flowers smash through the long winter.
Anne Sexton
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Why are all these dolls falling out of the sky? Was there a father? Or have the planets cut holes in their nets and let our childhood out, or are we the dolls themselves, born but never fed?
Anne Sexton
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My eyes, those sluts, those whores, would play no more.
Anne Sexton
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One of my secret instructions to myself as a poet is Whatever you do, don't be boring.
Anne Sexton
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All in all, I'd say, the world is strangling.
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