Each night I am nailed into place and 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?

— Anne Sexton

ExI 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.

— Anne Sexton

Fee-phi-fo-fum, now I'm borrowed, now I'm numb.

— Anne Sexton

Fee-phi-fo-fum -Now I'm borrowed. Now I'm numb.

— Anne Sexton

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

— Anne Sexton

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

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

— Anne Sexton

I am God, la de day.

— Anne Sexton

I am stuffing your mouth with your promises and watching you vomit them out upon my face.

— Anne Sexton

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 lose you… I keep losing people.

— Anne Sexton