Anne Sexton Quotes

Anne Sexton was born Anne Gray Harvey. Anne Sexton received the Pulitzer Prize for Live or Die. She struggled with depression, which she worked through with her poetry. Ultimately, she ended her own life, leaving us with poems that confessed many of the struggles she encountered with the body of her works. Discover Anne Sexton through her words!

• "Your legs that bounce me up and down,
  your dear nylon-covered legs,
  are the horses I will ride
  into eternity."
  - Anne Sexton, "Mothers"
  
  
• "My heart is on a budget.
  It keeps me on the brink."
  - Anne Sexton, "January 1st"
  
  
• "Castaway, your time is a flat sea that doesn't stop,
  with no new land to make for and no new stories to swap."
  - Anne Sexton, "Doors, Doors, Doors"
  
  
• "leaving the page of the book carelessly open,
  something unsaid, the phone off the hook
  and the love, whatever it was, an infection."
  - Anne Sexton, "Wanting to Die"
  
  
• "you are going, going.
  You who have inhabited me
  in the deepest and most broken place,
  are going, going."
  - Anne Sexton, "Going Gone"
  
  
• "All in all, I'd say,
  the world is strangling."
  - Anne Sexton, "As It Was Written"
  
  
• "Even so, I must admire your skill.
  You are so gracefully insane."
  - Anne Sexton, "Elegy in the Classroom"
  
  
• "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, "The Poet of Ignorance"
  
  
• "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, "Words"