Anne Sexton Quotes

Now I lay me down to sleep my bomb proof cellar's good and deep but if i'm killed before I wake remember god it's for your sake amen.

Nobody shoots at Santa Claus.

If there's a God in heaven, what's he waiting for? If He can't hear the children, then he must see the war.

All you have to do is walk into any children's hospital and you know there is no God. Prayer doesn't make any difference. Those people pray for their beloved children to live and they die.

Whenever I look at pictures of horrific things that soldiers do or that have been done to soldiers I always feel sorry for everybody involved because politics throws them into these horrific situations where really it's just 18-year-old kids.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

War is hell. Hollywood fantasizes about it and makes it look good... war sucks.

I hope my own children never have to fight a war.

There is nothing glamorous or romantic about war. It's mostly about random pointless death and misery.

I have never been in a war before, but I have seen famine and death. I was asking (myself) what do they feel when they do this? I don't understand it. They are all children of God. Why do they do it. I don't understand.

Hickory dickory dock my daddy’s nuts from shell shock. Humpty dumpty thought he was wise till gas came along and burned out his eyes. A dillar a dollar a ten o clock scholar blow off his legs and then watch him holler. Rockaby baby in the tree top don’t stop a bomb or you’ll probably flop. Now I lay me down to sleep my bombproof cellars good and deep but if I’m killed before I wake remember god its for your sake amen.

Some must be warriors, that others may live in peace.

Zeus it seems has given us from youth to old age a nice ball of wool to wind-nothing but wars upon wars until we shall perish every one.

I do not want to die of this disease. So I say to God: "It is seriously time for a miracle."

How many fears came between us? Earthquakes, diseases, wars where hell rained smoldering pus from skies made of winged death. Horror tore this world asunder. While inside the bleeding smoke and beyond the shredded weeping flesh we memorized tales of infinite good. -from The History Lesson

There whil'st the world prov'd prodigal of breath, the headless trunks lay prostrated in heaps; this field of funerals sacred unto death, did paint out horror in most hideous shapes: whil'st men unhors'd, horses unmast'red, stray'd, some call'd on those whom they most dearly lov'd, some rag'd, some groan'd, some sigh'd, roar'd, promis'd, pray'd, as blows, falls, faintness, pain, hope, anguish mov'd.

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other.

Men who fight wars in winter don't live till spring.

The most conspicuous thing about suffering is, as W.H. Auden once observed, its banality. The day is green, the sun is shinging, someone is eating, or opening a window, the torturer's horse is scatching its innocent behind on a tree, and in a mere second someone we love is dead.

O war! thou son of Hell!

There is nothing intelligent to say about a massacre.

I'm not sentimental about war. I see nothing noble in widows.