Anne Sexton Quotes

I still feel like there are a lot of things in me that people haven't seen. My soul hasn't been bared yet.

George Foreman. A miracle. A mystery to myself. Who am I? The mirror says back. The George you was always meant to be. Wasn't always like that. Used to look in the mirror and cried a river.

My dream is to one day just be me and my guitar. I'm working myself to the core. Who am I, underneath everything else? I'm still on that journey, to find that core.

I quit my last real job, as a writer at a magazine, when I was twenty-one. That was the moment when I lost my place of prestige on the fast track, and slowly, millimeter by millimeter, I started to get found, to discover who I had been born to be, instead of the impossibly small package, all tied up tightly in myself, that I had agreed to be.

I looked into that empty bottle and I saw myself.

And finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside, and keep on trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and could be, if there weren't any other people living in the world.

I was very, very thrown by the fact that I had to make some big changes in my life in order to be myself, but under this kind of movie-star banner.

I just realized one day that I was so unhappy. And not only that, but I didn't even like the person that I was. I didn't even know who I was. And so 'Shatter Me' is about first discovering what was under the shell and then learning to love that person that was under it. And then not being afraid to break free.

For so long, I looked at myself as literally a kid who was talented who would go up and down the pool. That's it. Nothing else. Very few people knew who I really was.

We all turn into something different, I'm just glad that I'm aware that I've had this alter ego since I was five years old and thankfully it hasn't got me into too much trouble.

Many of us spend the first part of our adult lives becoming - stepping into the roles we take on so that they come to define our lives. But I've learned that we don't really grow up until we unbecome.

I felt that just looking at the world in general, there are so many types of people, and some hide who they truly are. And I feel that every person has some kind of warped identity inside them that they decide if they want to show or not.

I love being able to fulfill such a huge and special part of myself with Pentatonix. But there is still so much more to me that, honestly, people don't get to see because we're in a group.

No one knows what capacities for doing and suffering he has in himself, until something comes to rouse them to activity: just as in a pond of still water, lying there like a mirror, there is no sign of the roar and thunder with which it can leap from the precipice, and yet remain what it is; or again, rise high in the air as a fountain. When water is as cold as ice, you can have no idea of the latent warmth contained in it.

The loss of illusions and the discovery of identity, though painful at first, can be ultimately exhilarating and strengthening.

Im like a man whos been half-asleep all his life, trying to find out what he was like before he woke up.

But when I call for a hero, out comes my lazy old self; so I never know who I am, nor how many I am or will be. I'd love to be able to touch a bell and summon the real me, because if I really need myself, I mustn't disappear.

You have to die a few times before you can really live.

I used to think I'd be just like them when I grew up, but I am not. And the thing is, somewhere along the way, I stopped wanting to be like them, anyway.

You never know what you can do until you have to do it.

I think in losing we find out who that person really is.

I turned myself to face me, but I've never caught a glimpse of how the others must see the faker.

Very early you come to the realization that nothing will ever take you away from yourself.

We fear discovering that we are more than we think we are. More than our parents/children/teachers think we are. We fear that we actually possess the talent that our still, small voice tells us. That we actually have the guts, the perseverance, the capacity. We fear that we truly can steer our ship, plant our flag, reach our Promised Land. We fear this because, if it’s true, then we become estranged from all we know. We pass through a membrane. We become monsters and monstrous.

There are times when you don't know yourself. There are times when you don't want to know yourself. There are times when you want to be what you have never allowed yourself to be before.