Only my books anoint me, and a few friends, those who reach into my veins.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of deep connections with both literature and close friends.
Anne Sexton's quote reflects the profound influence of her books and a select group of friends on her life. She suggests that the true essence of her identity and worth comes not from societal validation but from the intimate bonds formed through literature and deep friendship, highlighting the power of emotional connections that penetrate the soul.
In practice
This quote may be shared during a literary discussion about the impact of books on personal identity.
The Witch's Life" When I was a child there was an old woman in our neighborhood whom we called The Witch. All day she peered from her second story window from behind the wrinkled curtains and sometimes she would open the window and yell: Get out of my life! She had hair like kelp and a voice like a boulder. I think of her sometimes now and wonder if I am becoming her.
Do you like me?” No answer. Silence bounced, fell off his tongue and sat between us and clogged my throat. It slaughtered my trust. It tore cigarettes out of my mouth. We exchanged blind words, and I did not cry, I did not beg, but blackness filled my ears, blackness lunged in my heart, and something that had been good, a sort of kindly oxygen, turned into a gas oven.
Don't bite till you know if it's bread or stone.
Abundance is scooped from abundance yet abundance remains.
I find now, swallowing one teaspoon of pain, that it drops downward to the past where it mixes with last year’s cupful and downward into a decade’s quart and downward into a lifetime’s ocean. I alternate treading water and deadman’s float.
I am your dwarf. I am the enemy within. I am the boss of your dreams. See. Your hand shakes. It is not palsy or booze. It is your Doppelganger trying to get out. Beware...Beware...
But I want her to grow up knowing that I was the first man ever to fall in love with her. I'd always thought the father/daughter thing was overstated. But I can tell you, sometimes, she looks at me and I just become a puddle.
It is difficult to be generous-minded to those we have greatly harmed.
We do not look for compromise; rather, we seek to resolve the conflict to everyone's complete satisfaction.
If a man does not die of a wound, then it heals in some fashion, and so it is with loss. From the sharp pain of immediate berevement, both the Prince and I passed into the gray days of numb bewilderment and waiting. So grief has always seemed to me, a time of waiting not for the hurt to pass, but to become accustomed to it.
Stand not too near the rich man lest he destroy thee - and not too far away lest he forget thee.
She [Evelina] is not, indeed, like most modern young ladies; to be known in half an hour; her modest worth, and fearful excellence, require both time and encouragement to show themselves.
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