Quotes by Anne Sexton

“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, I dont want to live. . . . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Cant Live It. I cant even explain. I know how silly it sounds . . . but if you knew how it Felt. To be alive, yes, alive, but not be able to live it. Ay thats the rub. I am like a stone that lives . . . locked outside of all thats real. . . . Anne, do you know of such things, can you hear???? I wish, or think I wish, that I were dying of something for then I could be brave, but to be not dying, and yet . . . and yet to [be] behind a wall, watching everyone fit in where I cant, to talk behind a gray foggy wall, to live but to not reach or to reach wrong . . . to do it all wrong . . . believe me, (can you?) . . . whats wrong. I want to belong. Im like a jew who ends up in the wrong country. Im not a part. Im not a member. Im frozen.”

“Some women marry houses.”

“The grass as bristly and stout as chives and me wondering when the ground will break and me wondering how anything fragile survives”

“Live or die, but dont poison everything.”

“I am God, la de dah.”

“Death, I need my little addiction to you. I need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.”