Sexton Quotes

It was as if a morning-glory had bloomed in her throat, and all that blue and small pollen ate into my heart, violent and religious ~ Anne Sexton

I planned to suffer
and I cannot. ~ Anne Sexton

I was born doing reference work in sin, and born
confessing it. This is what poems are. ~ Anne Sexton

List of Artists Who Created Fantasy Worlds to Try and Cure Bouts of Sadness
1. Italo Calvino
2. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
3. Jim Henson and Jorge Luis Borges - Labyrinths
4. The creator of MySpace
5. Richard Brautigan
6. J.K. Rowling
7. The inventor of the children's toy Lite-Brite
8. Ann Sexton
9. David Foster Wallace
10. Gaugin and the Caribbean
11. Charles Schulz
12. Liam Rector ~ Shane Jones

I've never seen a surface that I think is more seductive in image making. ~ John Sexton

This one day her mother gave her
a basket of wine and cake
to take to her grandmother
because she was ill.
Wine and cake?
Where's the aspirin? The penicillin?
Where's the fruit juice?
Peter Rabbit got camomile tea.
But wine and cake it was. ~ Anne Sexton

Poets are sitting in my kitchen.
Why do these poets lie?
Why do children get children and
Did you hear what it said? ~ Anne Sexton

Oh, all right, I say,
I'll save myself. ~ Anne Sexton

In an old time
there was a king as wise as a dictionary. ~ Anne Sexton

Alone in our place I was a guest. ~ Anne Sexton

I have a sudden urge to pitch a tent in the back yard
tonight. ~ Marie Sexton

He was by no means a thief, but Jackie had learned the hard way that life could drag disgrace out of you. ~ Margaret Wilkerson Sexton

Thief!- how did you crawl into, crawl down alone into the death I wanted so badly and for so long ... ~ Anne Sexton

Has it ever occurred to you," she asked Rachel, "that the constitutional amendment protecting your right to follow Mormon doctrine is the same amendment that's supposed to protect everybody else from being forced to live according to your religious beliefs? ~ Marie Sexton

When in doubt, write it out. If that doesn't work, you're screwed. ~ Moniqua Sexton

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

In order for something to be remembered, a story must be told. ~ N.T. Sexton

I never seemed to like the spring for what it was; I always loved it for what it might have been. In the head. In the heart of hearts. It is in my ability, I think, to love something fully only if I am naturally, compulsively, irrationally drawn to it. ~ Anne Sexton

I grow old on my bitterness. ~ Anne Sexton

He was a very generous soul and was exceptionally dedicated to the medium of photography. ~ John Sexton

All in all, I'd say,
the world is strangling.
And I, in my bed each night,
listen to my twenty shoes
converse about it.
And the moon,
under its dark hood,
falls out of the sky each night,
with its hungry red mouth
to suck at my scars. ~ Anne Sexton

This November there seems to be nothing to say. ~ Anne Sexton

Poetry is my life, my postmark, my hands, my kitchen, my face. ~ Anne Sexton

I am so tired of that old suffering. ~ Anne Sexton

I would like to think that no one would die anymore
if we all believed in daisies
but the worms know better, don't they?
They slide into the ear of a corpse
and listen to his great sigh. ~ Anne Sexton

The first day at the power plant I found myself photographing some steam vents on the roof of the structure. And I remember consciously thinking that they were just like trees but they were metal. ~ John Sexton

I cannot walk an inch / without trying to walk to God. ~ Anne Sexton

I find the surface of a photograph a thing of beauty in and of itself, and it is this surface that makes a photograph unique relative to other two-dimensional media. ~ John Sexton

Let there be a heaven so that man may outlive his grasses. ~ Anne Sexton

Images are the heart of poetry ... You're not a poet without imagery. ~ Anne Sexton

Then all this became history. Your hand found mine. Life rushed to my fingers like a blood clot. Oh, my carpenter, the fingers are rebuilt. They dance with yours. ~ Anne Sexton

Some women marry houses. ~ Anne Sexton

The reason I do workshops is so I can learn, and I am fortunate that I've probably gained more from the whole experience of teaching than any one participant has. It is all about asking. ~ John Sexton

Our checks are pale. Our wallets are invalids.
Past due, past due, is what our bills are saying
and yet we kiss in every corner, scuffing the dust
and the cat. Love rises like bread as we go bust. ~ Anne Sexton

I brush my hair,
waiting in the pain machine for my bones to get hard,
for the soft, soft bones that were laid apart
and were screwed together. They will knit.
And the other corpse, the fractured heart,
I feed it piecemeal, little chalice. I'm good to it. ~ Anne Sexton

I make photographs and still make photographs of the natural environment. It's a love because that was part of my life before I was involved in photography. ~ John Sexton

The Saints come,
as human as a mouth,
with a bag of God in their backs,
like a hunchback,
they come,
they come marching in. ~ Anne Sexton

The place I live in is a kind of maze and I keep seeking the exit or the home. ~ Anne Sexton

The thing that drew them to her was the thing that had made all of them come to Sexton in the first place: they were all outsiders, people on the fringe. And no one, it seemed, understood this better than Suz. She turned her difference into a source of power, power that radiated from her, humming, a live thing that sent sparks out to anyone who listened. ~ Jennifer McMahon

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.
Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic. ~ Anne Sexton

Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself... ("You, Doctor Martin") ~ Anne Sexton

In 1979, I received a phone call from Ansel Adams asking me if I would be willing to consider coming to work for him. I was teaching photography in Southern California at that point. ~ John Sexton

You already are the guy I deserve."
"No, Zach," he said, shaking his head. "I'm just the guy you love. ~ Marie Sexton

I remember being shocked when I came out from under the focusing cloth after a minute or two being submerged within that, at the startling green color of those ferns. ~ John Sexton

It would be pleasant to be drunk. ~ Anne Sexton

One of my secret instructions to myself as a poet is "Whatever you do, don't be boring." ~ Anne Sexton

I understand addiction now. I never did before, you know. How could a man (or a woman) do something so self-destructive, knowing that they're hurting not only themselves, but the people they love? It seemed that it would be so incredibly easy for them to just not take that next drink. Just stop. It's so simple, really. But as so often happens with me, my arrogance kept me from seeing the truth of the matter.
I see it now though.
Every day, I tell myself it will be the last. Every night, as I'm falling asleep in his bed, I tell myself that tomorrow I'll book a flight to Paris, or Hawaii, or maybe New York. It doesn't matter where I go, as long as it's not here. I need to get away from Phoenix - away from him - before this goes even one step further.
And then he touches me again, and my convictions disappear like smoke in the wind.
This cannot end well. That's the crux of the matter, Sweets. I've been down this road before - you know I have - and there's only heartache at the end. There's no happy ending waiting for me like there was for you and Matt. If I stay here with him, I will become restless and angry. It's happening already, and I cannot stop it. I'm becoming bitter and terribly resentful. Before long, I will be intolerable, and eventually, he'll leave me. But if I do what I have to do, what my very nature compels me to do, and move on, the end is no better. One way or another, he'll be gone. Is it not wiser to end it now, Sweets, before it gets to t ~ Marie Sexton

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

Don't worry if they say you're crazy. They said that about me and yet I was saner than all of them. I knew. No matter. You know. Insane or sane, you know. It's a good thing to know - no matter what they call it. ~ Anne Sexton

Keeping The City

"Unless the Lord keepeth the city, the watchman guardeth in vain" - John F. Kennedy's unspoken words in Dallas on November 23, 1963.

Once,
in August,
head on your chest,
I heard wings
battering up the place,
something inside trying to fly out
and I was silent
and attentive,
the watchman.
I was your small public,
your small audience
but it was you that was clapping,
it was you untying the snarls and knots,
the webs, all bloody and gluey;
you with your twelve tongues and twelve wings
beating, wresting, beating, beating
your way out of childhood,
that airless net that fastened you down.

Since then I was more silent
though you had gone miles away,
tearing down, rebuilding the fortress.
I was there
but could do nothing
but guard the city
lest it break.

I was silent.
I had a strange idea I could overhear
but that your voice, tongue, wing
belonged solely to you.
The Lord was silent too.
I did not know if he could keep you whole,
where I, miles away, yet head on your chest,
could do nothing. Not a single thing.

The wings of the watchman,
if I spoke, would hurt the bird of your soul
as he nested, bit, sucked, flapped.
I wanted him to fly, burst like a missile from your throat,
burst from the spidery-mother-web,
burst from Woman herself
w ~ Anne Sexton

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. ~ Anne Sexton

We've inherited many ideas about writing that emerged in the eighteenth century, especially an interest in literature as both an expression and an exploration of the self. This development - part of what distinguishes the "modern" from the "early modern" - has shaped the work of many of our most celebrated authors, whose personal experiences indelibly and visibly mark their writing. It's fair to say that the fiction and poetry of many of the finest writers of the past century or so - and I'm thinking here of Conrad, Proust, Lawrence, Joyce, Woolf, Kafka, Plath, Ellison, Lowell, Sexton, Roth, and Coetzee, to name but a few - have been deeply autobiographical. The link between the life and the work is one of the things we're curious about and look for when we pick up the latest book by a favorite author. ~ James Shapiro

Am I to bless the lost you,
sitting here with my clumsy soul? ~ Anne Sexton

I dream
for an absentee and oft maligned
device - the accident-maker,
the soul-taker, my camera;
its factory guaranteed
third eye, without which I am duly dim
and memory denied. No pictures
for my contrived Arbus to declare,
excepting some stitch of Sexton
manages these sentences
of despair. ~ Kristen Henderson

Consider
a girl who keeps slipping off,
arms limp as old carrots,
into the hypnotist's trance,
into a spirit world
speaking with the gift of tongues. ~ Anne Sexton

When I'm about ready to press the cable release on the View camera, I've tried to anticipate some of the challenges I'm going to encounter in the darkroom. ~ John Sexton

Everyone has left me
except my muse,
that good nurse.
She stays in my hand,
a mild white mouse. ~ Anne Sexton

He also wasn't sure where to go to avoid running into some type of surfer gang. He'd seen Point Break and while he suspected it was nothing but Hollywood bullshit, he didn't exactly want to find out the hard way he was wrong. ~ Marie Sexton

Our bodies were trash.
We leave them on the shore. ~ Anne Sexton

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

Words

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be as good as fingers.
They can be as trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.
Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.
Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren't good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.
But 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

The snow has quietness in it; no songs,
no smells, no shouts or traffic.
When I speak
my own voice shocks me. ~ Anne Sexton

Heathers!" I said triumphantly. "I think I've got that one here somewhere."
"Hey. Ram, doesn't this cafeteria have a no-fags allowed policy?"
"What?"
"The answer is, 'They seem to have an open door policy on assholes, though, don't they?'"
I just stood there, trying to figure out if he was calling me a fag or an asshole or both, and he rolled his eyes at me again.
"It's a line from Heathers, man. ~ Marie Sexton

I think the greatest photographers are the amateur photographers who do it because they love it. Arnold Newman is a good example; he is a consummate professional, but he's also an 'amateur' in the pure sense of the word. ~ John Sexton

Conversion is not for the faint of heart. It is a difficult process, requiring effort and perseverance. ~ John Sexton

January?
The month is dumb.
It is fraudulent.
It does not cleanse itself.
The hens lay blood-stained eggs.
Do not lend your bread to anyone
lest it nevermore rise.
Do not eat lentils or your hair will fall out.

Do not rely on February
except when your cat has kittens,
throbbing into the snow.
Do not use knives and forks
unless there is a thaw,
like the yawn of a baby.
The sun in this month
begets a headache
like an angel slapping you in the face.

Earthquakes mean March.
The dragon will move,
and the earth will open like a wound.
There will be great rain or snow
so save some coal for your uncle.
The sun of this month cures all.
Therefore, old women say:
Let the sun of March shine on my daughter,
but let the sun of February shine on my daughter-in-law.
However, if you go to a party
dressed as the anti-Christ
you will be frozen to death by morning.

During the rainstorms of April
the oyster rises from the sea
and opens its shell -
rain enters it -
when it sinks the raindrops
become the pearl.
So take a picnic,
open your body,
and give birth to pearls.

June and July?
These are the months
we call Boiling Water.
There is sweat on the cat but the grape
marries herself to the sun.

Hesitate in August.
Be shy.
Let your toes tremble ~ Anne Sexton THE SERMON OF THE TWELVE ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Meanwhile in my head, I'm undergoing open-heart surgery. ~ Anne Sexton

O yellow eye,
let me be sick with your heat,
let me be feverish and frowning. ~ Anne Sexton

Nature is full of teeth
that come in one by one, then
decay,
fall out. ~ Anne Sexton

Bless all useful objects,
the spoons made of bone,
the mattress I cook my dreams upon,
the typewriter that is my church
with an altar of keys always waiting. ~ Anne Sexton

Poems aren't postcards to send home. ~ Anne Sexton

When they turn the sun
on again I'll plant children
under it, I'll light up my soul
with a match and let it sing ... ~ Anne Sexton

Perhaps I am no one.
True, I have a body
and I cannot escape from it.
I would like to fly out of my head,
but that is out of the question. ~ Anne Sexton

I will ask no more of life than this:
that I might love you through all my days,
and that you may find both peace and joy in the constancy of my heart. ~ Robert Sexton

Jesus saw the multitudes were hungry
and He said, Oh Lord,
send down a short-order cook. ~ Anne Sexton

I was
the girl of the chain letter,
the girl full of talk of coffins and keyholes,
the one of the telephone bills,
the wrinkled photo and the lost connections ... ~ Anne Sexton

I love Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I also love more cerebral poets like H.D. and Emily Dickinson. My parents subscribed to a monthly poetry periodical, and as a teenager I was introduced to Denise Levertov, who was an influence. ~ Francesca Lia Block

To be without God is to be a snake / who wants to swallow an elephant. ~ Anne Sexton

I am not immortal. Faustus and I are the also-ran. ~ Anne Sexton

What the hell happened to your leg?" Ang asked him.
Matt looked down at his shin, which was scraped and oozing and seemed to be caked in mud. "Crashed."
"Crashed what?" Ang asked.
"My mountain bike. We just got back."
"You crashed, then what? Rolled in dirt?"
He laughed. "Something like that actually. It's not a successful ride if you don't bleed." He must not have noticed the look of horror on my face, because he asked, suddenly enthusiastic, "You guys ride?"Angelo and I just looked at each other, and he seemed to realize that was a "no." "Too bad. Well, make yourselves at home. Beer's in the fridge. I have to get cleaned up. Kickoff's in ten minutes."
"Football?" Angelo asked.
Matt looked at his as if he had just asked if the sky was really blue. "Yeah! First game of the regular season!" We just stared blankly at him, and he just laughed and disappeared down the hall.
Angelo looked at me with a smile on his face. "Four fags watchin' football. Must be pretty fuckin' cold in hell right now. ~ Marie Sexton

She married the prince
and all went well
except for the fear
the fear of sleep.
Briar Rose
was an insomniac ...
She could not nap
or lie in sleep
without the court chemist
mixing her some knock-out drops
and never in the prince's presence. ~ Anne Sexton

All considerations
for these human remains!
They must have an escort!
They are classified! ~ Anne Sexton

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

We all start in this medium because of the magic and the challenge is to keep it going. ~ John Sexton

Life is a trick, life is a kitten in a sack. ~ Anne Sexton

You cutting the lawn, fixing the machines,
all this leprous day and then more vodka,
more soda and the pond forgiving our bodies,
the pond sucking out the throb. ~ Anne Sexton

Wanting to Die

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.

Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.

To thrust all that life under your tongue! -
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,

and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

leaving the page of the book carelessly ~ Anne Sexton

How are you? How is your wonderful bathroom? How are the books you read and the things you think? Your dogs and their lives? The weather? Your feelings? ~ Anne Sexton

It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was. ~ Anne Sexton

Many photographers are consumed with the idea of making beautiful contact sheets. I am far more interested in making the best final print I can. ~ John Sexton

Fear / a motor, / pumps me around and around / until I fade slowly ... ~ Anne Sexton

Annie, Annie you sang
and I knew you drove a pure gold car
and put diamonds in you coke
for the crunchy sound, the adorable sound
and the moon too was in your portfolio, ~ Anne Sexton

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

Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone. ~ Anne Sexton

You must be a poet,
a lady of evil luck
desiring to be what you are not,
longing to be
what you can only visit. ~ Anne Sexton

Jared was completely gone now, holding his stomach and laughing so hard that tears were running down his face. Matt turned on him and snapped, "It's not funny," which only made Jared laugh harder.
"Any of you guys strict about top or bottom?" Angelo asked, "'Cause if so, you'll screw it all up-"
"Literally," Cole said.
"And we'll have to start all over." Angelo turned to Matt. "If you got a strong preference you better say so now."
"Lay it all out, so to speak," Cole said.
"On the table." Angelo said.
"For all to see."
"Zach does like to watch," Angelo said, winking at me, and I was relieved that with the direction the conversation was going, nobody took him seriously.
"Then it's settled!" Cole said. "Who's going where with whom first? Zach, I think you're up." He winked at me. "Or you soon will be."
"Oh dear God," Mat moaned, hanging his head. "I knew I shouldn't have come."
"Don't worry about it a bit," Cole said. "I'm sure Zach can coax at least one more out of you."
Jared laughed so hard, I was amazed he managed to stay in his chair. ~ Marie Sexton

I like you; your eyes are full of language.
[Letter to Anne Clarke, July 3, 1964.] ~ Anne Sexton

Clover['s] eyes are full of language. ~ Anne Sexton

Put your mouthful of words away
and come with me to watch
the lilies open in such a field,
growing there like yachts,
slowly steering their petals
without nurses or clocks. ~ Anne Sexton

We talked death with burned-up intensity, both of us drawn to it like moths to an electric light bulb. Sucking on it! ~ Anne Sexton