627 Quotes by Anne Sexton

I feel unspeakably lonely. And I feel - drained. It is a blank state of mind and soul I cannot describe to you as I think it would not make any difference. Also it is a very private feeling I have - that of melting into a perpetual nervous breakdown. I am often questioning myself what I further want to do, who I further wish to be; which parts of me, exactly, are still functioning properly. No answers, darling. At all.

Let me hold your heart like a flower lest it bloom and collapse.

I’d won the worldbut like aforsaken explorer,I’d lostmy map.

I am, to be sure, afraid that if you knew me that you wouldn’t love me. But this must be faced…I fear it in any relationship. Thus I am perhaps afraid to reveal facts about things…or to say too much for fear if I make too much noise you’ll drift away, pull down the shade of your ivory tower…and after that. Afraid, I guess, that I’ll loose you…I keep losing people.

Sometimes I feel like another creature, hardly a woman. I can’t be a modern woman. I’m a Victorian teenager–at heart.

Each night I am nailed into placeand forget who I am.Daddy? That's another kind of prison.It's not the prince at all, but my fatherdrunkeningly bends over my bed, circling the abyss like a shark, my father thick upon melike some sleeping jellyfish.What voyage is this, little girl? This coming out of prison? God help -this life after death?

Give me your skin as sheer as a cobweb, let me open it up and listen in and scoop out the dark.

Poetry led me by the hand out of madness.

…madness is not hysteria. It can be very quiet…