Anne Sexton Quotes

I'm a fan of creative writing and telling stories.

The things I like to find in a story are punch and poetry.

The advice I continually give to young writers is this, "Learn to paint pictures with words." Not just once upon a time, but ... In the long secret dust of ages, beneath a blue forgotten sky, where trade winds caress the sun bleached shores of unknown realms ... See, as much as there are words in poetry, there is a poetry in words. Use it, stay faithful to the path you have set your heart upon and follow it.

Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry.

When I am writing fiction, I believe I am much better organized, more methodical - one has to be when writing a novel. Writing poetry is a state of free float.

You use simple brushstrokes in a screenplay for things over which you would take much greater pains in a novel.

Writing is more about imagination than anything else. I fell in love with words. I fell in love with storytelling.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies skillfully.

A lot of writing is a form of seeing - putting down what you see in terms of action and landscape.

I am a literary animal. For me, everything ends in literature.

Fiction is very important to me. It's what I do, it's what I do with my life.

You have only so many chances to tell stories. I didn't want to be forever wedded to one form of storytelling when there are so many out there.

What you compose with is neither here nor there, you compose with words, or you compose with stone plants and trees, or you compose with events; the Sheriff's officer, or whatever.

I'm a storyteller: the crux of the matter is to reach beauty, poetry; it doesn't matter if that is comedy or tragedy. They're the same if you reach the beauty.

I am a writer, which means I write stories, I write novels, and I would write poetry if I knew how to. I don't want to limit myself.

For me, literature is a complex game, both mental and concrete, which is acted out in a physical manner on the page.

Writing is immensely difficult. The short forms especially.

Literature is the question minus the answer.

Lapped in poetry, wrapped in the picturesque, armed with logical sentences and inalienable words.

Literature, of course, is not a contest.

Fiction will always be my greatest love, with poetry close behind.

I'm a very conceptual writer.

When you are writing literary writing, you are communicating something subtextual with emotions and poetry. The prose has to have a voice; it's not just typing. It takes a while to get that voice.

I'm just a storyteller.

Cut quarrels out of literature, and you will have very little history or drama or fiction or epic poetry left.