Anne Sexton

"Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins."

"“Her Kind I have gone out, a possessed witch,haunting the black air, braver at night;dreaming evil, I have done my hitchover the plain houses, light by light:lonely thing, twelve-fingered, out of mind. A woman like that is not a woman, quite. I have been her kind. I have found the warm caves in the woods,filled them with skillets, carvings, shelves,closets, silks, innumerable goods;fixed the suppers for the worms and the elves:whining, rearranging the disaligned. A woman like that is misunderstood. I have been her kind. I have ridden in your cart, driver,waved my nude arms at villages going by,learning the last bright routes, survivorwhere your flames still bite my thighand my ribs crack where your wheels wind. A woman like that is not ashamed to die. I have been her kind.”"

"“Saints have no moderation, nor do poets, just exuberance.”"

"“Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.”"

"“I am stuffing your mouth with yourpromises and watching you vomit them out upon my face.”"

"“As it has been said:Love and a coughcannot be concealed. Even a small cough. Even a small love.”"

"Death's in the good-bye."

"It doesn't matter who my father was it matters who I remember he was."

"Love your self's self where it lives."

"Sometimes the soul takes pictures of things it has wished for, but never seen."

"“Anne, I don't want to live. . . . Now listen, life is lovely, but I Can't Live It. I can't 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 that's the rub. I am like a stone that lives . . . locked outside of all that's 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 can't, 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?) . . . what's wrong. I want to belong. I'm like a jew who ends up in the wrong country. I'm not a part. I'm not a member. I'm frozen.”"

"As it has been said:Love and a coughcannot be concealed. Even a small cough. Even a small love."

"He turns the key. Presto!It opens this book of odd taleswhich transform the Brothers Grimm. Transform?As if an enlarged paper clipcould be a piece of sculpture.(And it could.)"

"Pain engraves a deeper memory."

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

"It is snowing and death bugs meas stubborn as insomnia."

"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."

"Depression is boring, I thinkand I would do better to makesome soup and light up the cave."

"We were fair game but we have kept out of the cesspool. We are strong. We are the good ones. Do not discover us for we lie together all in green like pond weeds. Hold me, my young dear, hold me."

"Courage It is in the small things we see it. The child's first step,as awesome as an earthquake. The first time you rode a bike,wallowing up the sidewalk. The first spanking when your heartwent on a journey all alone. When they called you crybabyor poor or fatty or crazyand made you into an alien,you drank their acidand concealed it. Later,if you faced the death of bombs and bulletsyou did not do it with a banner,you did it with only a hat tocover your heart. You did not fondle the weakness inside youthough it was there. Your courage was a small coalthat you kept swallowing. If your buddy saved youand died himself in so doing,then his courage was not courage,it was love; love as simple as shaving soap."