The Awful Rowing Toward God Quotes

“Maybe I am becoming a hermit,
opening the door for only
a few special animals?
Maybe my skull is too crowded
and it has no opening through which
to feed it soup?”
― Anne Sexton , The Awful Rowing Toward God

“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, The Awful Rowing Toward God

“If I could blame it on all
the mothers and fathers of the world,
they of the lessons, the pellets of power,
they of the love surrounding you like batter ...
Blame it on God perhaps?
He of the first opening
that pushed us all into our first mistakes?
No, I'll blame it on Man
For Man is God
and man is eating the earth up
like a candy bar
and not one of them can be left alone with the ocean
for it is known he will gulp it all down.
The stars (possibly) are safe.
At least for the moment.
The stars are pears
that no one can reach,
even for a wedding.
Perhaps for a death.”
― Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God

“The windows,
the starving windows
that drive the trees like nails into my heart.”
― Anne Sexton , The Awful Rowing Toward God

“and God was there like an island I had not rowed to,
still ignorant of Him, my arms, and my legs worked,
and I grew, I grew,
I wore rubies and bought tomatoes
and now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I'd say,
I am rowing, I am rowing
though the oarlocks stick and are rusty
and the sea blinks and rolls
like a worried eyebal,
but I am rowing, I am rowing,
though the wind pushes me back
and I know that that island will not be perfect,
it will have the flaws of life,
the absurdities of the dinner table,
but there will be a door
and I will open it
and I will get rid of the rat insdie me,
the gnawing pestilential rat.
God will take it with his two hands
and embrace it”
― Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God

“There is hope.
There is hope everywhere.
Today God gives milk
and I have the pail”
― Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God

“Yes. It is the witch's life,
climbing the primordial climb,
a dream within a dream,
then sitting here
holding a basket of fire.”
― Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God

“For all you who are going,
and there are many who are climbing their pain,
many who will be painted out with a black ink
suddenly and before it is time,
for these many I say,
awkwardly, clumsily,
take off your life like trousers,
your shoes, your underwear,
then take off your flesh,
unpick the lock of your bones.
In other words
take off the wall
that separates you from God.”
― Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God

“You must be a poet,
a lady of evil luck
desiring to be what you are not,
longing to be
what you can only visit.”
― Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God

“Someone brought me oranges in my despair
but I could not eat a one”
― Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God

“I with my royal straight flush,
love you so for your wild card,
that untamable, eternal, gut-driven ha-ha
and lucky love.”
― Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God

“I am, each day,
typing out the God
my typewriter believes in.
Very quick. Very intense.”
― Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God

“Who are they"
"Fallen angels who were not good enough to be saved,
nor bad enough to be lost" say the peasantry.”
― Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God

“O fallen angel,
the companion within me,
whisper something holy
before you pinch me
into the grave.”
― Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God

“It is without grace.
There is no rhythm
in this country of dirt.”
― Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God

“Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.”
― Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God

“I'm mooring my rowboat / at the dock of the island called God. / This dock is made in the shape of a fish / and there are many boats moored / at many different docks. / 'It's okay,' I say to myself / with blisters that broke and healed / and broke and healed -- / saving themselves over and over. / And salt sticking to my face and arms like / a glue-skin pocked with grains of tapioca. / I empty myself from my wooden boat / and onto the flesh of The Island.


'On with it!' He says and thus / we squat on the rocks by the sea / and play - can it be true - / a game of poker. / He calls me. / I win because I hold a royal straight flush. / He wins because He holds five aces, / A wild card had been announced / but I had not heard it / being in such a state of awe / when he took out the cards and dealt. / As he plunks down his five aces / and I am still grinning at my royal flush, / He starts to laugh, / and laughter rolling like a hoop out of His mouth / and into mine / and such laughter that He doubles right over me / laughing a Rejoice-Chorus at our two triumphs. / Then I laugh, the fishy dock laughs / the sea laughs. The Island laughs. / The Absurd laughs.


Dearest dealer, / I with my royal straight flush, / love you so for your wild card, / that untamable, eternal, gut-driven ha-ha /
and lucky love.”
― Anne Sexton, The Awful Rowing Toward God