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I think I've been writing black poems all along, wearing my white mask. I'm always the victim ... but no longer!

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
Think
Wearing
Thinking
Victim
Along
Longer
White
Black
Writing
Poems
Always
Mask

More quotes by Anne Sexton

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Today God gives milk / and I have the pail.
Anne Sexton
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Oh sharp diamond, my mother! I could not count the cost of all your faces, your moods that present that I lost. Sweet girl, my deathbed, my jewel-fingered lady...
Anne Sexton
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To die whole, riddled with nothing but desire for it, is like breakfast after love.
Anne Sexton
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It's a little mad, but I believe I am many people. When I am writing a poem, I feel I am the person who should have written it.
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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The beautiful feeling after writing a poem is on the whole better even than after sex, and that's saying a lot.
Anne Sexton
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Watch out for intellect, because it knows so much it knows nothing and leaves you hanging upside down, mouthing knowledge as your heart falls out of your mouth.
Anne Sexton
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... and my love stays bitterly glowing, spasms of it will not sleep, and I am helpless and thirsty and need shade but there is no one to cover me- not even God.
Anne Sexton
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My husband sings Baa Baa black sheep and we pretend that all's certain and good, that the marriage won't end.
Anne Sexton
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Watch out for love (unless it is true, and every part of you says yes including the toes), it will wrap you up like a mummy, and your scream won't be heard and none of your running will run.
Anne Sexton
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Yes, I know. Death sits with his key in my lock. Not one day is taken for granted. Even nursery rhymes have put me in hock.
Anne Sexton
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Rocks crumble, make new forms, oceans move the continents, mountains rise up and down like ghosts yet all is natural, all is change.
Anne Sexton
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And the aura of you remains, remains, remains...
Anne Sexton
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Yesterday I did not want to be borrowed but this is the typewriter that sits before me and love is where yesterday is at.
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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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
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I did not know the woman I would be nor that blood would bloom in me each month like an exotic flower, nor that children, two monuments, would break from between my legs.
Anne Sexton
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What's the point of fighting the dollars when all you need is a warm bed? When the dog barks you let him in. All we need is someone to let us in. And one other thing: to consider the lilies in the field.
Anne Sexton
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Come, my pretender, my fritter, my bubbler, my chicken biddy! Oh succulent one, it is but one turn in the road and I would be a cannibal!
Anne Sexton
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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