“Maybe I am becoming a hermit,
opening the door for only
a few special animals?
Maybe my skull is too crowded
and it has no opening through which
to feed it soup?”
― Anne Sexton, quote from The Awful Rowing Toward God
“God went out of me
as if the sea dried up like sandpaper, as if the sun
became a latrine.
God went out of my fingers.
They became stone.
My body became a side of mutton
and despair roamed the slaughterhouse.”
― Anne Sexton, quote from The Awful Rowing Toward God
“If I could blame it on all
the mothers and fathers of the world,
they of the lessons, the pellets of power,
they of the love surrounding you like batter ...
Blame it on God perhaps?
He of the first opening
that pushed us all into our first mistakes?
No, I'll blame it on Man
For Man is God
and man is eating the earth up
like a candy bar
and not one of them can be left alone with the ocean
for it is known he will gulp it all down.
The stars (possibly) are safe.
At least for the moment.
The stars are pears
that no one can reach,
even for a wedding.
Perhaps for a death.”
― Anne Sexton, quote from The Awful Rowing Toward God
“The windows,
the starving windows
that drive the trees like nails into my heart.”
― Anne Sexton, quote from The Awful Rowing Toward God
“and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,
still ignorant of Him, my arms, and my legs worked,
and I grew, I grew,
I wore rubies and bought tomatoes
and now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I'd say,
I am rowing, I am rowing
though the oarlocks stick and are rusty
and the sea blinks and rolls
like a worried eyebal,
but I am rowing, I am rowing,
though the wind pushes me back
and I know that that island will not be perfect,
it will have the flaws of life,
the absurdities of the dinner table,
but there will be a door
and I will open it
and I will get rid of the rat insdie me,
the gnawing pestilential rat.
God will take it with his two hands
and embrace it”
― Anne Sexton, quote from The Awful Rowing Toward God
“For all you who are going,
and there are many who are climbing their pain,
many who will be painted out with a black ink
suddenly and before it is time,
for these many I say,
awkwardly, clumsily,
take off your life like trousers,
your shoes, your underwear,
then take off your flesh,
unpick the lock of your bones.
In other words
take off the wall
that separates you from God.”
― Anne Sexton, quote from The Awful Rowing Toward God
Anne Sexton
Born place: in Newton, Massachusetts, The United States
Born date November 9, 1928
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“Dan was heading for the blue car in the driveway. He tossed Amy the car keys. "Don't drive like you! Make it fast!”
― Peter Lerangis, quote from The Dead of Night
“Sometimes never is distorted perception. I love you, Hope. And I'm not the only one. I know you care about me. I see it in your eyes. I feel it.
Everybody needs love. Everybody. And some people need it more that others. You're a liar if you say you don't. I'll do that for you. I'll love you. All you have to do is let me.”
― Cheryl McIntyre, quote from Sometimes Never
“All I have to do is shoot! In my excitement, I throw the ball down with more force than ever, feeling bad-ass. It ricochets off the floor at an angle and slams right into my crotch.
All around me, the room goes, “Ohhhh!”
I look up. Every face is staring at me, contorted into winces. Right. Ball in crotch equals excruciating pain. I’m such an idiot! Too late, I double over in pain.
“Ouch!” I yell. I sneak a glance around. Nobody looks convinced, so I add, “My balls!”
― Jody Gehrman, quote from Babe in Boyland
“It's her ability as an artist to see possibility where others see a blank page and, by extension, to see victory where others see certain defeat that truly empowers her...”
― Cassandra Clare, quote from Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader
“The eternal problem of the human being is how to structure his waking hours.”
― Eric Berne, quote from Games People Play
Nicholas Nickleby
The Oedipus Cycle: O...
Tell No One
Fragile Eternity
Soulless
The Forest of Hands...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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