text:
Talk:Sigmund Freud

And what's the deal with the long, op-ed following Nabakov's quote, blaming Freud for postmodernist Theory and God knows what else? That's a pretty egregious extrapolation! I can't find anything to indicate Nabokov shares the opinion of the editor who wrote the entry.

What's the deal with this long Russian canard about cocaine? Is there a reason not to delete it? Mgasner 07:25, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Quotes about a person belong in that person's article. See Templates/People. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 08:50, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Quotes about Sigmund Freud?? That's like the last hundred years of more or less everything written. Mgasner 23:16, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Feel free to add quotes from more or less everything written in the last hundred years (mind you, about Freud, not psychoanalysis in general -- the later would belong in psychology). Personally, I have read much literature that has not mentioned Freud -- but then again, that might just be me and my own highly unique taste. I look further to your expansion of the Freud article (if the section gets big enough, of course, we might break it out to its own article and put a "see also" -- let us wait and see how it develops. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 15:15, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Why are some quotes bolded and some not? --207.145.105.170 21:34, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

Dubious Freud quote about weapons
I noticed and researched a dubious quote about weapons, to the effect that fear of weapons is a form of immaturity. I don't think that Freud said it, first of all because it's out of character. But I also looked up the citation and did not find the quote in Freud's book that is supposed to have it. So I moved the quote to a new misattribution section. 67.182.181.122 16:27, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Why the quote is listed as misattributed
Someone feels entitled to call the Freud quote about guns "attributed" unless it can be proven that Freud never said it. Actually, you can never prove that kind of a negative about most false attributions. You could claim that Churchill heaped praise on the Nazis and it would be impossible to prove that it was never said.

What is true is that the quote has been traced to an essay by Don Kates in which the words were clearly Kates' and not Freud's. Moreover, even Kates' citation to Freud was misread, because he did not claim to be paraphrasing General Introduction to Psychoanalysis. There is that and the fact that the quote is out of character for Freud. Barring new evidence, it is fair call this quote misattributed. Quotes aren't "innocent until proven guilty." 67.182.181.122 07:28, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

 * So your argument is that if a claim is of such a nature that it could never be proven, you are free to assert it without proof? 24.15.192.213 03:59, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

 * The evidence of this statement being a misattribution is quite copious in its placement within the "Misattributed" section, and the evidence of it being genuine is zilch. I have thus reverted an effort to place it among the "Unsourced" quotations under the obsolete heading "Attributed". ~ Kalki 17:43, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

 * It appears that the NOR and RS policies apply here (per Citing sources). Examples of original research include: "It introduces an argument, without citing a reputable source for that argument, that purports to refute or support another idea, theory, argument, or position; It introduces an analysis or synthesis of established facts, ideas, opinions, or arguments in a way that builds a particular case favored by the editor, without attributing that analysis or synthesis to a reputable source".

 * I see a source for the claim that a writer said something similar as a paraphrase of Freud's views. I see no source for the claim that this is the source for the quotation. That's original research. 24.15.192.213 21:10, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

 * On the contary, the quote itself is spurious original research; you're turning the prohibition on original research upside-down.  Backers of this quote have repeatedly cited Don Kates to argue that the quote is genuine.  But if you look at what Kates wrote, it's clear misattribution.  The page directly cites the act of misattribution itself, on four occassions, not just Kates' essay.

 * Of course, whenever people misread a citation to put words into Freud's mouth, you could still throw up your hands and say, who knows, maybe Freud actually did say it some other time. But this kind of "who knows" isn't reasonable; it would mean that no quote could ever be called a misattribution.  The quote in question is both undocumented and out of character; and there is a recurrent, sloppy citation that explains why people think that Freud said it.  This isn't "original research", it's simple common sense.  67.182.181.122 15:49, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

 * In GUNS, MURDERS, AND THE CONSTITUTION, A Realistic Assessment of Gun Control, By Don B. Kates, Jr., discusses the "Penis theory" of gun control: "The idea of gun ownership as sexual aberration has been casually espoused by such anti-gun luminaries as Arthur Schlessinger Jr., Harlan Ellison, Mike Royko, and Joyce Brothers."
 * A final point of interest is Dr. Tanay's citation of Freud's view that weapons may symbolize the penis in dreams. This, Freud said, is true of dreams involving any long object (e.g., "sticks, umbrellas, poles, trees") but especially objects that may be viewed as penetrating and injuring ("... knives, daggers, lances, sabers; firearms are similarly used ..."). This passage refers to dreams in general without distinguishing gun owners from others. Dr. Tanay is perhaps unaware of--in any event, he does not cite--other passages more relevant to his argument. In these other passages Freud associates retarded sexual and emotional development not with gun ownership, but with fear and loathing of weapons.[49]
 * [49] Compare the passage from the 10th Lecture (at 507 of The Major Writings of Sigmund Freud, Great Books ed., 1952), which Dr. Tanay does cite, to S. Freud & D. Oppenheim, Dreams in Folklore (1958) at 33.
 * The example cited is from: Dreams in Folklore, by Sigmund Freud and D.E. Oppenheim, International Universities Press, Inc, New York, 1958. (This was available at http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?seq=11&view=image&size=100&id=mdp.39015002166091&u=1&num=33 but has since been removed due to copyright concerns.)
 * In reference to interpretation of a dream in which a woman was trying to draw a dagger and woke up to find herself pulling on her husband, Freud and Oppenheim wrote at page 33:
 * "The representation of the penis as a weapon, cutting knife, dagger etc., is familiar to us from the anxiety dreams of abstinent women in particular and also lies at the root of numerous phobias in neurotic people."
 * Naaman Brown (talk) 18:06, 10 March 2012 (UTC)

The weapons quote was removed
The quote was removed by an IP in this dif. If someone wants to add it back, consider whether it is a notable misattribution. I don't know how widely it is cited in significant sources. I don't consider it Wikiquote's mission to rebut all the errors in countless internet forums, if that's all there is to this. ~ Ningauble 14:43, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Cigar is just a cigar
This is a popular misattribution. Anyone who is vaguely familiar with Freud should know that for him, a cigar was /never/ just a cigar. --209.89.155.96 01:43, 6 May 2009 (UTC)

You're right, he actually said "Sometimes a pipe is just a pipe" in response to one of his students asking what his pipe meant. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/List_of_misquotations

Unsourced
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Sigmund Freud. --Antiquary 18:35, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
 * A belligerent state permits itself every such misdeed, every such act of violence, as would disgrace the individual.
 * Anatomy is destiny.
 * Every normal person, in fact, is only normal on the average. His ego approximates to that of the psychotic in some part or other and to a greater or lesser extent.
 * Great revolutions in science have a common denominator: They knock human arrogance off one pedestal after another of our conviction about our previous conviction about our own self-importance.
 * He that has eyes to see and ears to hear may convince himself that no mortal can keep a secret. If his lips are silent, he chatters with his fingertips; betrayal oozes out of him at every pore.
 * Human life in common is only made possible when a majority comes together which is stronger than any separate individual and which remains united against all separate individuals. The power of this community is then set up as "right" in opposition to the power of the individual, which is condemned as "brute force."
 * I have found little that is "good" about human beings on the whole. In my experience most of them are trash, no matter whether they publicly subscribe to this or that ethical doctrine or to none at all.
 * In the long run, nothing can withstand reason and experience, and the contradiction religion offers to both is palpable.
 * It must be admitted that women have but little sense of justice, and this is no doubt connected with the preponderance of envy in their mental life.
 * Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.
 * Religion... comprises a system of wishful illusions together with a disavowal of reality, such as we find in an isolated form nowhere else but in amentia, in a state of blissful hallucinatory confusion.
 * Religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis. ("In so doing, the idea forces itself upon him that religion is comparable to a childhood neurosis, and he is optimistic enough to suppose that mankind will surmount this neurotic phase, just as so many children grow out of their similar neurosis." Future of an illusion.
 * Sadism is all right in its place, but it should be directed to proper ends.
 * Sex is the mathematical urge repressed.
 * Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
 * The idea of a God was not a lie but a device of the unconscious which needed to be decoded by psychology. A personal god was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and for life to go on forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshiped by human beings out of an abiding sense of helplessness. Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity. It had promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity had come of age, however, it should be left behind.
 * Such progress we have made! In the Middle Ages, they would have burned me as a witch, but now they are content to burn my book. (On the burning of his books by the Nazi regime in Germany.)
 * The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him.
 * The great question that has never been answered, and which I have not yet been able to answer, despite my thirty years of research into the feminine soul, is “What does a woman want?”
 * The moment a man begins to question the meaning and value of life, he is sick.
 * The only thing about masturbation to be ashamed of is doing it badly.
 * The only unnatural sexual behavior is none at all. - Actually I found a source. Or at least kind of a source, but since it doesn't give us time when these words were said, nor 100% percent probability I'm leaving it in a discussion. also there are problems with my account. http://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/03/20/unnatural-act/#return-note-5719-7 sais that 'In 1987 the “Barnes & Noble Book of Quotations” edited by Robert I. Fitzhenry presented a variant expression ascribed to Sigmund Freud. QI has not yet attempted to trace this variant quote.
 * The paranoid is never entirely mistaken.
 * The pleasure of satisfying a savage instinct, undomesticated by the ego, is incomparably much more intense than the one of satisfying a tamed instinct. The reason is becoming the enemy that prevents us from a lot of possibilities of pleasure.
 * We are our desires. (appears at the end of the video of the Nu Virgos hit Stop! Stop! Stop!)
 * Secrets make you sick.
 * The meager satisfaction that man can extract from reality leaves him starving.
 * Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later in uglier ways.

Decisions
I was wondering if this quote has been rejected for some reason? It seems attributable, and a fairly popular quote (though usually unsourced), so I expected to see it included or in here as misattributed/rejected.

"I can only tell you of my personal experience," he said. "When making a decision of minor importance, I have always found it advantageous to consider all the pros and cons. In vital matters, however, such as the choice of a mate or a profession, the decision should come from the unconscious, from somewhere within ourselves. In the important decisions of personal life, we should be governed, I think, by the deep inner needs of our nature." -- in "Listening with the Third Ear: The inner experience of a psychoanalyst", Theodor Reik, 1948, p. vii. In context, Reik had asked his mentor whether he should pursue a career in psychoanalysis, this was Freud's reply. Bazzargh (talk) 14:00, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Emigration from Austria

 * I can heartily recommend the Gestapo to anyone.

Removed. The quote the daughter gives is incorrect. The sentence was never written, the only testimony of the quote coming from Freud is not correct.

 * Martin Freud's daughter Sophie commented in her book Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family (Praeger, Westport CT 2007, p. 137 books.google):
 * This document was later found by historians, and no such sentence appears in it. I can imagine a scenario in which Freud told his family what he almost wrote. It would indeed have been unthinkable for Freud to jeopardize the lives of 17 people for the sake of a clever joke.

Somercet (talk) 17:45, 12 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I believe we should mention the quote on the page with some kind of comment: actually, the publisher of the 1989 catalogue featuring the document and another researcher agree that it might be a joke between Freud and his lawyer who was writing that document: "When Indra presented Freud with the chorded text, Freud might have said that it might be helpful to add a postscript to the effect that he could recommend the Gestapo to everyone in the best possible way. This joke might have made it easier for Freud to sign and pleased Indra. Indra may have told the story to Franz Rudolf Bienenfeld, who in turn passed it on to Ernest Jones. Ernest Jones' account was in turn adopted and developed by Peter Gay. What first started as a joke between Freud and Indra could have been taken at face value by Ernest Jones and others. Incidentally, Hansjörg Krug comes to a similar conclusion in the Nebehay catalog." https://www.freud-museum.at/en/blog-posts-details/articles/the-writing-of-dr-indra Ain92 (talk) 09:51, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

Love and work quotations
I cannot find any citations to Freud's work which contain either of these quotations, both of which appear frequently on quotation websites and elsewhere on the interwebs: According to Elms (2001), something akin to those quotations "... was possibly said by Freud, in some form vaguely resembling the currently cited version. But it did not appear in print until eleven years after Freud's death, and its final form may owe more to the writer [Erik Erikson] who published it than to Freud."
 * "Work and love, love and work - that's all there is."
 * "Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness."

Would it be appropriate to add these quotations to the Misattributed section?

Citation: Alan C. Elms, Apocryphal Freud: Sigmund Freud’s Most Famous “Quotations” and Their Actual Sources, Annual of Psychoanalysis, 2001, Vol. XXIX, pp. 83-104.

Thanks! Markworthen (talk) 20:08, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

title: Talk:Sigmund Freud


text:
Masturbation

Masturbation is the sexual stimulation of one's own genitals for sexual arousal or other sexual pleasure, usually to the point of orgasm.

Quotes

 * This is the type of emotional condition that appears to govern the habits of onanism in children who are otherwise very unlikely to suspect sexual precocity.
 * L'enfant turbulent, Henri Wallon, éd. PUF, 1984 (1ère édition : 1925), partie I_ Le stade de développement psychomoteur, chap. Le stade émotif, p. 107

 * The accusation of onanism does not appear any more than that of running away to result from the sole desire to burden the child, in order to obtain his internment. Most often, she responds well to her appearance as a repulsed, sad and shy little being. Humiliation, the feeling of abandonment and loneliness clearly encourage the child to masturbate. If it is in adolescents or adults that this habit is found, it seems linked to the evocation of situations or scenes related to the genital complexion of the subject: most often a jealous or a masochist, who therefore further combines sexual excitement with depressive dispositions. His reaction is of the conditional type, like all those that arise from emotion. Local excitement is only an adjuvant, of which the subject rather seeks to divert his thoughts, far from being attentive to it as to stimulations of a sensory and truly tactile nature.
 * L'enfant turbulent, Henri Wallon, éd. PUF, 1984 (1ère édition : 1925), partie I_ Le stade de développement psychomoteur, chap. Le stade émotif, p. 108

 * Onanism sometimes gives way to pederasty and tribadism. There is clearly, in all these cases, emotional excitement. It results in irritability and also in the taste for caresses, zoophilia (2 - need for animal caresses) and even the need for affection. It is not unrelated to a state of boredom, vague, nostalgic appetite, emotional insufficiency and worry, which are very often the germ of perverse behavior. Anxiety without object, disgust, painful impression of moral anesthesia, search for appropriate stimulation, desire for risk, adventure, subterfuges of imagination or sensitivity are at the origin of running away, wandering, theft, lies, niches, teasing, acts of cruelty, of which this category of children is predilection guilty.
 * L'enfant turbulent, Henri Wallon, éd. PUF, 1984 (1ère édition: 1925). cité par Louis le Guilant in La relation de l’enfant et du milieu dans l’œuvre de Wallon

 * Venereal orgasm can help resolve anxious tone. Masturbation is a common reaction of melancholic people. Anxious waiting often results in erotic needs.
 * La vie mentale, Henri Wallon, éd. éditions sociales/Messidor, 1982, p. 211

 * As for the part of sexuality which can mix with anxiety, it is indeed an observable fact (...) I pointed out how frequent onanism is among children rejected by those around them and who usually live in the constraint and apprehension.
 * Henri Wallon cité par Émile Jalley (1981) in Wallon lecteur de Freud et Piaget (p.245). Terrains/Editions Sociale
 * Les origines du caractère chez l'enfant. Les Préludes du sentiment de personnalité., Henri Wallon, éd. P.U.F., 1934, p. 115-120

 * Don't knock masturbation, it's sex with someone I love.
 * Woody Allen, in

 * I would masturbate in a red speedo.
 * Gillian Anderson, when asked what would she do if she and David Duchovny switched bodies for a week. Reddit "Gillian Anderson here. I've brought David Duchovny with me. Ask us anything, we'll answer almost everything." (October 12, 2013)

 * If God had intended us not to masturbate, he would've made our arms shorter.
 * George Carlin, quoted in Strean Jokes: Their Purpose and Meaning (1993), p. 72.

 * Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted. To have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature.
 * Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor of Children, 2:10:95:3

 * When scolded for masturbating in public, he said "I wish it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing my belly."
 * Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 46, 69, quoting Diogenes of Sinope
 * Variant: If only it were as easy to banish hunger by rubbing the belly as it is to masturbate.
 * As quoted in Encarta Book of Quotations (2000) edited by Bill Swainson, p. 274

 * We know that more than seventy to eighty percent of women masturbate, and ninety percent of men masturbate, and the rest lie.
 * Joycelyn Elders,

 * You're gonna be pleasing each other, and if he already knows what pleases him, and he's gonna please himself, then why am I in the picture?
 * Christine O'Donnell,

 * To intervene in this personal, secret activity, which masturbation was, does not represent something neutral for the parents. It is not only a matter of power, or authority, or ethics; it's also a pleasure
 * Michel Foucault (1990). Politics, philosophy, culture: interviews and other writings, 1977-1984. Routledge. p. 9.

 * In this room, right now, each of you, in your own lives, has agonized over the fact that you have masturbated. Masturbation isn't sinful. If it feels good — do it. You have my blessing, and you yourself know how it relaxes you.
 * Madalyn Murray O'Hair, in an address to Memphis State University, Memphis, Tennessee, "Fundamentalism" (22 October 1986).

 * Masturbation is the thinking man's television.
 * Christopher Hampton Jonathan, in The Philanthropist (1969)

 * But I wonder why he the heretic Jovinianus set Judah and Tamar before us for an example, unless perchance even harlots give him pleasure; or Onan, who was slain because he grudged his brother his seed. Does he imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children?
 * Jerome, Against Jovinian, 1:19, (AD 393)

 * Among all types of sexual activity, masturbation is, however, the one in which the female most frequently reaches orgasm.
 * Alfred Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), ch.5, p. 132.
 * Self improvement is masturbation.
 * Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, character of Tyler Durden.

 * watch carefully over the young man; he can protect himself from all other foes, but it is for you to protect him against himself. Never leave him night or day, or at least share his room; never let him go to bed till he is sleepy, and let him rise as soon as he wakes. Distrust instinct as soon as you cease to rely altogether upon it. Instinct was good while he acted under its guidance only; now that he is in the midst of human institutions, instinct is not to be trusted; it must not be destroyed, it must be controlled, which is perhaps a more difficult matter. It would be a dangerous matter if instinct taught your pupil to abuse his senses; if once he acquires this dangerous habit he is ruined. From that time forward, body and soul will be enervated; he will carry to the grave the sad effects of this habit, the most fatal habit which a young man can acquire. If you cannot attain to the mastery of your passions, dear Emile, I pity you; but I shall not hesitate for a moment, I will not permit the purposes of nature to be evaded. If you must be a slave, I prefer to surrender you to a tyrant from whom I may deliver you; whatever happens, I can free you more easily from the slavery of women than from yourself.
 * Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, book IV

 * I didn't get to masturbate this morning, and I've been dying to, so I've gotta go.
 * Anna Nicole Smith in the ; Cited in: David Volk (2004) The Tribe Has Spoken: Life Lessons from Reality TV. p. 89.

 * I have touched filth. Only with the finger tip I touched it, inquisitive of the taste of it. But it creeps. It has spread over my body a slime, and into my soul a stupor.
 * Olaf Stapledon, in  - fragment of a poem supposedly written by Paul

 * Masturbation: the primary sexual activity of mankind. In the nineteenth century it was a disease; in the twentieth, it's a cure.
 * Thomas Szasz, (1974) [1973]. "Sex". The Second Sin. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd. p. 10.

 * “Homer, in the second book of the Iliad says with fine enthusiasm, "Give me masturbation or give me death." Caesar, in his Commentaries, says, "To the lonely it is company; to the forsaken it is a friend; to the aged and to the impotent it is a benefactor. They that are penniless are yet rich, in that they still have this majestic diversion." In another place this experienced observer has said, "There are times when I prefer it to sodomy." Robinson Crusoe says, "I cannot describe what I owe to this gentle art." Queen Elizabeth said, "It is the bulwark of virginity." Cetewayo, the Zulu hero, remarked, "A jerk in the hand is worth two in the bush." The immortal Franklin has said, "Masturbation is the best policy." Michelangelo and all of the other old masters--"old masters," I will remark, is an abbreviation, a contraction--have used similar language. Michelangelo said to Pope Julius II, "Self-negation is noble, self-culture beneficent, self-possession is manly, but to the truly great and inspiring soul they are poor and tame compared with self-abuse." Mr. Brown, here, in one of his latest and most graceful poems, refers to it in an eloquent line which is destined to live to the end of time--"None knows it but to love it; none name it but to praise.”
 * Mark Twain, Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism, Stomach Club, Paris address, Spring, 1879.

 * This is a strange -- and rather alarming -- realisation. For it clearly implies that masturbation is one of our highest faculties that human beings have developed. Many animals masturbate -- but never without the presence of another animal, or some similar stimulus. A human being can masturbate in an empty room: a triumph of pure imagination.
 * Colin Wilson in The Misfits , p. 90.

 * Frighted she wakes, and waking frigs: Nature thus kindly eased In dreams raised by her grunting pigs And her own thumb betwixt her legs,  She’s innocent and pleased.
 * Earl of Rochester, Poems on Several Occasions (1680) “grunting” or “murmuring”; “innocent and” or “innocently”

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Masturbation


text:
Alice Cooper

Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier, February 4, 1948) is an American singer, songwriter, and actor whose career spans over 50 years. With a raspy voice and a stage show that features numerous props and stage illusions, including pyrotechnics, guillotines, electric chairs, fake blood, reptiles, baby dolls, and dueling swords, Cooper is considered by music journalists and peers to be "The Godfather of Shock Rock".

Poppin (1969)

 * Interview in Poppin (September 1969)

 * People that haven't seen us yet are shocked because they think that Alice Cooper must be a female folksinger. They don't expect the whole thing. And the whole thing is a direct product of television and movies and America, 'cause that's where America's based. That's where their heart is from the sex and violence of TV and the movies, and that was our influence.

 * If you confine it, you're confining a whole thing. If you make it spontaneous, so that anything can happen, like we don't want to confine or restrict anything. What we can do, whatever we can let happen, you just let it happen. ... we're taking sex, which is probably another half of American entertainment, sex and violence, and we're projecting it, and we're saying this is the way everything is right now. Biologically, everyone is male and female, so many male genes and so many female. And so what it is is we're saying "OK, what's the big deal. Why is everybody so up tight about sex?" About faggots, queers, things like that. That's the way they are. ... People don't accept that they are both male and female, and people are afraid to break out of their sex thing because that's a big insecurity that's doing that. Consequently, people will make fun of us. We don't mind that, that's making them accept more, making fun that we accept that. The thing is this is the way we are. We think it's a gas. ... We like reactions — a reaction is walking out on us, a reaction is throwing tomatoes at the stage, that's a healthy psychological reaction. Reaction's applauding, passing out or throwing up, and all of that is a reaction, and as much of that we can get, the better. I don't care how they react, as long as they react.

 * We can only take it so far, because man can only take it so far, lower self can only take it so far, and you have to realize that the public is only at a certain place. We won't see the day when the public accepts what we wanna project, even though they are accepting a lot now. By the time they're accepting it, maybe they'll be too old. ... If it's total freedom, I guess the ultimate thing you can go into is total silence between the audience and performer, with the performer projecting something he doesn't even have to play. A total silence trip is the ultimate. ... We do antagonize them psychologically. People look at us and react. They either go "Wow! Hey-hey-hey, baby!" and we say that's great. They're reacting and that's wonderful. It's better than them sitting there doing nothing. I say make them react — do whatever's in your power to move the audience, and if that's where it is, and there where it is with America, sex and violence, then I say project it.

1970s

 * How old are you? Sixteen? S-seventeen? [asks security guard] Is seventeen legal?
 * Remarks at a Texas concert in 1973, recorded in Good to See You Again, Alice Cooper (1974)

School's Out (1972)

 * Well we can't salute ya Can't find a flag If that don't suit ya That's a drag School's out for summer School's out forever School's been blown to pieces.
 * "School's Out" - Lyrics online.

Billion Dollar Babies (1973)

 * I used to be such a sweet, sweet thing 'Til they got a hold of me. I opened doors for little old ladies, I helped the blind to see. I got no friends 'cause they read the papers. They can't be seen with me and I'm gettin' real shot down And I'm feeling mean. No more Mister Nice Guy, No more Mister Clean, No more Mister Nice Guy, They say he's sick, he's obscene.
 * "No More Mr. Nice Guy" (co-written with Michael Owen Bruce) - Full lyrics online - YouTube video.

Welcome to My Nightmare (1975)

 * Man's got his woman to take his seed He's got the power — oh She's got the need She spends her life through pleasing up her man She feeds him dinner or anything she can. She cries alone at night too often He smokes and drinks and don't come home at all. Only women bleed...
 * "Only Women Bleed" (co-written with Dick Wagner) - Lyrics online.

2000s

 * Mistakes are part of the game. It's how well you recover from them, that's the mark of a great player.
 * On the game of Golf in an interview with Nick Harper in The Guardian (28 November 2003)

 * Nobody and nothing beats The Simpsons. Even after all this time, it's still the best satire since Monty Python. I haven't had an alcoholic drink in 22 years, but when I did drink I'd go for either Canadian whisky or Budweiser. Sometimes both. For a long time I used to think "Hey you, get off the floor!" was my name.
 * same interview with Nick Harper in The Guardian (28 November 2003)

 * I call it treason against rock 'n' roll because rock is the antithesis of politics. Rock should never be in bed with politics. ... When I was a kid and my parents started talking about politics, I'd run to my room and put on the Rolling Stones as loud as I could. So when I see all these rock stars up there talking politics, it makes me sick. .... If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal.
 * On Rock n Roll and political campaigns, in a statement to the Canadian Press (26 August 2004), as quoted in "Rock is on a roll with politics" by Warren Kinsella in the Globe and Mail (12 September 2004)

 * I'm very romantic, I'm extremely romantic. I date my wife. ... That's one thing guys don't understand. This is something that you would be very surprised that I understand, is that men are microwaves and women are pressure cookers. Men want sex, bang; women like romance. Guys, learn how to romance.
 * Interview with Andrew Denton on Enough Rope (20 June 2005)

 * He has a woman's name and wears makeup. How original.
 * On Marilyn Manson, as quoted in Celebrity Diss and Tell : Stars Talk About Each Other (2005) by Boze Hadleigh

 * The minute you step onstage, you get eight feet taller
 * Interview with CBC (2006)

 * From the moment I leave my house or my hotel room, the public owns me. The public made Alice Cooper and I can't imagine ever turning my back on my fans.
 * As quoted in Philadelphia Daily News (3 March 2006)

 * When you believe in God, you've got to believe in the all-powerful God. He's not just God, He's the all-powerful God and He has total control over everyone's life. The Devil, on the other hand, is a real character that's trying his hardest to tear your life apart. If you believe that this is just mythology, you're a prime target because you know that's exactly what Satan wants: To be a myth. But he's not a myth, of this I'm totally convinced. More than anything in the world, I'm convinced of that.
 * Interview with Donald L. Hughes (22 April 2006)

 * It's so funny that people think I actually ran for President. I am maybe the most un-political person you're ever going to meet. When I put "Elected" out, it was definitely a satire ... "Alice Cooper for President" ... when everybody realized I was running against Nixon, you known, even on a joke level, I think I got a lot of write-in votes.
 * Kingsnake podcast interview (26 May 2006)

KNAC interview (2005)

 * Interview: "Kerby’s Exclusive Interview with Metal Icon Alice Cooper"at KNAC.com (22 September 2005)

 * To me, if you are in the same building with Peter Sellers or John Cleese, or any of those guys and holding your own making other people laugh, that’s a compliment.
 * On being on The Muppet Show

 * I get onstage now with more attitude at fifty-seven than I had when I was twenty. When I was twenty, my attitude was kind of like, "Yeah, yeah…I'm a big rock star." Now, when I get onstage, I go up there, and I am the Moriarty of rock. I am the consummate villain. I am the Hannibal Lector of rock, and I play it like that. Alice just seems like an arrogant bastard or villain who is making the audience feel as though they are lucky to be there when in reality that is exactly the opposite of my personality. With Alice though…it is great to play him or portray him as an Alan Rickman type character who is very condescending. That’s what makes him fun to watch — he's Captain Hook.

 * In the early days when I was drinking ... I had a very blurry line about where those two were... but I mean, that happens when you drink twenty-two hours a day. I would just sit and drink. I didn’t know whether or not I was supposed to be Alice when I went out for dinner and was a little lit. Then there was the question about whether or not I should wear the make up because I didn’t really want to disappoint anyone. Was I supposed to get into trouble? Was I supposed to get arrested that night? All of those questions went through my mind. You have to remember though who my older brothers and sisters were though--guys like Jim Morrison and Keith Moon and all the people who were living that life. After they all died, I just sat there and went, “if one generation is going to learn from the next the truth is going to have to be that you don’t have to die to be your character.” I figured then that I had better be able to separate the two. When I go onstage as Alice to this day, I play Alice to the hilt — I play him for everything he is worth, but when I’m offstage, I never think about Alice Cooper. He never occurs to me. .. I walk off stage though and I turn away from the audience, I go back to being me again. Whenever I see an audience, that’s when I turn into Alice. If there was no audience there, there would be no reason to be Alice. … If I tried to be Alice Cooper all the time — I’d either be in an insane asylum or in jail or dead. Alice is just too intense, and you just can’t be Alice all the time. Jim Morrison couldn’t be Jim Morrison, so he died. Jimi Hendrix couldn’t be Jimi Hendrix, so he died. That’s really what killed Janis Joplin, Keith Moon and all the way down the line. They were all animated characters who couldn’t live up to their lifestyle, so I said that I needed to be able to separate the two — that’s why I’m still here.

CNSNews interview (2014)

 * Quotes of Cooper in "Alice Cooper, Christian: 'The World Belongs to Satan'" by Michael W. Chapman, CNSNews.com (31 December 2014)]

 * Well, before you are always self—you’re always self-centered. Everything is for you. Your self is God. And we make lousy gods. Humans make lousy gods, I think. We need to let God be God and us be what we are. I think that’s what changes: the focus on who you’re serving. You’re not serving you. You’re serving Christ.

 * If you're listening to a rock star in order to get your information on who to vote for, you're a bigger moron than they are. Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal.

 * Sometimes I think that TV evangelism is one of Satan’s greatest weapons. They put these guys on a pedestal and all of a sudden they get caught with a prostitute, and every Christian I know then is under the gun. So you don’t think that’s kind of set up?

 * I’m telling you, the Devil is very smart. He’s not going to come out with the horns and the tail. He’s going to come in as the slickest car salesman you ever saw – and I’ve seen some pretty slick pastors on TV. Now that’s not to say they’re all like that. … But every time I hear something that goes a little left of center, I go, ‘What? What was that?’  You know, too much healing on TV, I don’t know about that. That’s showbiz I think.

2020s

 * I’m understanding that there are cases of transgender, but I’m afraid that it’s also a fad, and I’m afraid there’s a lot of people claiming to be this just because they want to be that,” he said. “I find it wrong when you’ve got a six-year-old kid who has no idea. He just wants to play, and you’re confusing him telling him, ‘Yeah, you’re a boy, but you could be a girl if you want to be.’
 * 23 August 2023 interview with Jon Blistein of Rolling Stone

title: Alice Cooper


text:
User talk:EliasAlucard~enwikiquote

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title: User talk:EliasAlucard~enwikiquote


text:
Talk:Fathers

The following quotes were moved here from the page because the source has no apparent notability. If he is notable, please create a wp page, a wq page or add evidence of notability here. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 09:10, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

 * "My dad is great because he brought me up to think so and I agree with him." ~ Jeff Turley
 * "By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right - he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong!" ~ Charles Wadsworth
 * "My father didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it." ~ Clarence Budington Kelland
 * "My father taught me to be independent and cocky and free thinking, but he could not stand if it I disagreed with him." ~ Sara Maitland
 * "Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance." ~ Ruth E. Renkel

The following quotes are anonymous quotes I could find nowhere except on wq and mirrors, and so were removed from the article. ~ MosheZadka (Talk) 09:17, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

 * "Fathers are men who give daughters away to other men who aren't nearly good enough...so they can have grandchildren who are smarter than anybody's."
 * "There's a bathroom in heaven for the father of girls."
 * "When my father died and my two brothers and I sat down to talk about him, we discovered that we were talking about three different men - and I had never met the other two."
 * "We are so peculiarly constituted that it is easier to be a large hero than a small martyr: a father would willingly risk his life to save his child from a burning building, but not give up his afternoon of golf to take the child to the zoo. Yet it is the small sacrifices, multiplied many times, that give love more meaning than the heroic gesture in a crisis."

Unsourced

 * "Blessed indeed is the man who hears many gentle voices call him father!" ~ Lydia Maria Child
 * "By profession, I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder, infinitely prouder, to be a father." ~ General Douglas MacArthur
 * "The father who does not teach his son his duties is equally guilty as the son who neglects them." ~ Confucius
 * "Happy is the father whose child finds his attempts to amuse it, amusing." ~ Robert Lynd
 * "I could not point to any need in childhood as strong as that for a father's protection." ~ Sigmund Freud
 * "It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was." ~ Anne Sexton
 * "Mommy would never divorce Daddy. He's just like one of the family." ~ Bil Keane
 * "My father used to shirk his parental responsibilities by saying that life was an illusion; karma was also a convenient excuse for foul-ups.  In my mind echos: 'Sorry I sold your baseball cards, Monkey, but it's your karma, and life is just an illusion anyway, boy.'" ~ Monkey, Inside Monkey Zetterland
 * "The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother." ~ Theodore Hesburgh
 * "A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty." ~ Anonymous
 * "One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters." ~ George Herbert
 * "A good father lives so he is a credit to his children." ~ Arnold Glasow
 * "What a father says to his children is not heard by the world, but it will be heard by posterity." ~ Jean Paul
 * "Fathers should be neither seen nor heard. That is the only proper basis for family life." ~ Oscar Wilde
 * "He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it." ~ Clarence Budington Kelland
 * "A father is always making his baby into a little woman. And when she is a woman he turns her back again." ~ Enid Bagnold
 * "Sometimes the poorest man leaves his children the richest inheritance." ~ Ruth E. Renkel
 * "Any man can be a father. It takes someone special to be a dad." ~ Author Unknown
 * "There are three stages of a man's life: He believes in Santa Claus, he doesn't believe in Santa Claus, he is Santa Claus." ~ Author Unknown
 * "Luke, I am your father." - Darth Vader
 * "Hell is full of dads." - George Carlin

title: Talk:Fathers


text:
Lydia Maria Child

Lydia Maria Child (11 February 1802 – 7 July 1880) was an American abolitionist, women's rights activist, opponent of U.S. expansionism, Indian rights activist, novelist, and journalist.

Quotes

 * Pillars are fallen at thy feet, Fanes quiver in the air, A prostrate city is thy seat, And thou alone art there.
 * Marius amid the Ruins of Carthage

 * Genius hath electric power Which earth can never tame, Bright suns may scorch and dark clouds lower, Its flash is still the same.
 * Marius amid the Ruins of Carthage

 * England may as well dam up the waters of the Nile with bulrushes as to fetter the step of Freedom, more proud and firm in this youthful land than where she treads the sequestered glens of Scotland, or couches herself among the magnificent mountains of Switzerland.
 * Supposititious Speech of James Otis. The Rebels, Chap. iv

 * I was gravely warned by some of my female acquaintances that no woman could expect to be regarded as a lady after she had written a book.
 * "Concerning Women", Independent, 21 Oct 1869, as quoted in "Extracts from 'Concerning Women'" in A Lydia Maria Child Reader (1997), edited by Carolyn L. Karcher, p 403.

1830s

 * Every human being has, like Socrates, an attendant spirit; and wise are they who obey its signals. If it does not always tell us what to do, it always cautions us what not to do.
 * Philothea (1836), p. 51 (in EPUB version)

An Appeal on Behalf of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833)

 * An Appeal on Behalf of That Class of Americans Called Africans (1833), Allen & Ticknor, Boston, Massachusetts

 * Neither the planters nor the Colonization Society, seem to ask what right we have to remove people from the places where they have been born and brought up, —where they have a home, which, however miserable, is still their home, —and where their relatives and acquaintances all reside. Africa is no more their native country than England is ours, —nay, it is less so, because there is no community of language or habits; —besides, we cannot say to them, as Gilpin said to his horse, "'Twas for your pleasure you came here, you shall go back for mine."
 * Chapter V

 * We first crush people to the earth, and then claim the right of trampling on them forever, because they are prostrate.
 * Chapter VI

 * They [the slaves] have stabbed themselves for freedom—jumped into the waves for freedom—starved for freedom—fought like very tigers for freedom! But they have been hung, and burned, and shot—and their tyrants have been their historians!
 * Chapter VI

 * In the first place, an unjust law exists in this Commonwealth, by which marriages between persons of different color is pronounced illegal. I am perfectly aware of the gross ridicule to which I may subject myself by alluding to this particular; but I have lived too long, and observed too much, to be disturbed by the world's mockery.
 * Chapter VIII

 * In the first place, the government ought not to be invested with power to control the affections, any more than the consciences of citizens. A man has at least as good a right to choose his wife, as he has to choose his religion. His taste may not suit his neighbors; but so long as his deportment is correct, they have no right to interfere with his concerns.
 * Chapter VIII

 * I do not know how the affair at Canterbury is generally considered; but I have heard individuals of all parties and all opinions speak of it—and never without merriment or indignation. Fifty years hence, the black laws of Connecticut will be a greater source of amusement to the antiquarian, than her famous blue laws.
 * Chapter VIII

1840s

 * I will work in my own way, according to the light that is in me.
 * Letter to Ellis Gray Loring (1843).
 * Over the river, and through the wood, To grandfather's house we go; The horse knows the way, To carry the sleigh, Through the white and drifted snow.
 * The New England Boy's Song About Thanksgiving Day, st. 1, from Flowers for Children (1844-1846).

Letters from New York (1843)

 * Not in vain is Ireland pouring itself all over the earth. Divine Providence has a mission for her children to fulfill; though a mission unrecognized by political economists. There is ever a moral balance preserved in the universe, like the vibrations of the pendulum. The Irish, with their glowing hearts and reverent credulity, are needed in this cold age of intellect and skepticism.
 * Letters from New York, vol. 1, letter 33

 * Flowers have spoken to me more than I can tell in written words. They are the hieroglyphics of angels, loved by all men for the beauty of the character, though few can decypher even fragments of their meaning.
 * Letters from New York, vol. 1, letter 26

 * None speak of the bravery, the might, or the intellect of Jesus; but the devil is always imagined as a being of acute intellect, political cunning, and the fiercest courage. These universal and instinctive tendencies of the human mind reveal much.
 * Letters from New York, vol. 1, letter 34

 * The nearer society approaches to divine order, the less separation will there be in the characters, duties, and pursuits of men and women. Women will not become less gentle and graceful, but men will become more so. Women will not neglect the care and education of their children, but men will find themselves ennobled and refined by sharing those duties with them; and will receive, in return, co-operation and sympathy in the discharge of various other duties, now deemed inappropriate to women. The more women become rational companions, partners in business and in thought, as well as in affection and amusement, the more highly will men appreciate home.
 * Letters from New York, vol. 1, letter 34

 * Home—that blessed word, which opens to the human heart the most perfect glimpse of Heaven, and helps to carry it thither, as on an angel’s wings.
 * Letters from New York, vol. 1, letter 34

 * The eye of genius has always a plaintive expression, and its natural language is pathos.
 * Letters from New York, vol. 1, letter 39

 * Reverence is the highest quality of man’s nature; and that individual, or nation, which has it slightly developed, is so far unfortunate. It is a strong spiritual instinct, and seeks to form channels for itself where none exists; thus Americans, in the dearth of other objects to worship, fall to worshipping themselves.
 * Letters from New York, vol. 1, letter 18

 * Misfortune is never mournful to the soul that accepts it; for such do always see that every cloud is an angel’s face. Every man deems that he has precisely the trials and temptations which are the hardest of all others for him to bear; but they are so, simply because they are the very ones he most needs.
 * Letters from New York, vol. 1, letter 39

 * There was a time when all these things would have passed me by, like the flitting figures of a theatre, sufficient for the amusement of an hour. But now, I have lost the power of looking merely on the surface. Everything seems to me to come from the Infinite, to be filled with the Infinite, to be tending toward the Infinite. Do I see crowds of men hastening to extinguish a fire? I see not merely uncouth garbs, and fantastic, flickering lights, of lurid hue, like a trampling troop of gnomes—but straightway my mind is filled with thoughts about mutual helpfulness, human sympathy, the common bond of brotherhood, and the mysteriously deep foundations on which society rests; or rather, on which it now reels and totters.
 * Letters from New York, vol. 1, letter 1

 * Childhood itself is scarcely more lovely than a cheerful, kind, sunshiny old age.
 * Letters from New York, vol. 1, letter 37

 * That man’s best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature’s infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds.
 * Letters from New York,vol. 1, letter 38

 * The cure for all the ills and wrongs, the cares, the sorrows, and crimes of humanity, all lie in that one word LOVE. It is the divine vitality that produces and restores life.  To each and every one of us it gives the power of working miracles, if we will.
 * Letters from New York (1841-1843), p. 206, Letter XXVIII, 29 Sep 1842

1850s

 * It is impossible to exaggerate the evil work theology has done in the world.
 * ''The Progress of Religious Ideas Through Successive Ages, 1855, p. 451, vol. 3

 * Woman stock is rising in the market. I shall not live to see women vote, but I'll come and rap on the ballot box.
 * Letter to Sarah Shaw (1856)

 * The United States is...a warning rather than an example to the world.
 * To the twenty-fifth-anniversary meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society (1857)

1860s

 * I think we have reason to thank God for Abraham Lincoln. With all his deficiencies, it must be admitted that he has grown continually.
 * Letter to George W. Julian (8 April 1865), as quoted in The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery, by Eric Foner, p. 336

 * All who strive to live for something beyond mere selfish aims find their capacities for doing good very inadequate to their aspirations. They do so much less than they want to do, and so much less than they, at the outset, expected to do, that their lives, viewed retrospectively, inevitably look like failure.
 * 'Letter to John Fraser' (1868)

 * Neither lemonade nor anything else can prevent the inroads of old age. At present, I am stoical under its advances, and hope I shall remain so. I have but one prayer at heart; and that is, to have my faculties so far preserved that I can be useful, in some way or other, to the last.
 * 'Letter to Harriet Seward' (1869)

1870s

 * That a majority of women do not wish for any important change in their social and civil condition, merely proves that they are the unreflecting slaves of custom.
 * Letter to the Advocates of Woman’s Suffrage (1870).
 * Yours for the unshackled exercise of every faculty by every human being.
 * Message to woman suffrage supporters'' (c. 1875)

Quotes about Lydia Maria Child

 * Although women were present at the founding meetings of the American Anti-Slavery Society and a few of them received permission to speak, they did not vote or otherwise partake in the decision-making apparatus of the convention. The AASS constitution provided that all persons except slaveholders, who subscribed to the organization's principles and supported it financially were eligible for membership. "For the first few years," one historian reported, "no one thought of defining 'persons,' and custom determined the respective roles of men and women members." In time, however, woman's prominence in the antislavery work became evident. Lydia Maria Child, for example, was probably as important as William Lloyd Garrison in the formative years of the AASS; and by 1837 Angelina and Sarah Grimké were among the best known public figures identified with the abolitionist cause.
 * Bettina Aptheker Woman's Legacy: Essays on Race, Sex, and Class in American History (1982)

 * Biographies of eminent women designed to appeal to literate women readers became a popular genre in the 19th century in England and in other European countries.In the United States this genre is represented by a two-volume History of Women by Lydia Maria Child. ... The only female sources she uses are travel writers and Phillis Wheatley. Her omissions are more interesting than her inclusions; for example, under "Vindications of Women" she lists Marguerite de Navarre but neither Christine de Pzan nor Mary Wollstonecraft. Frances Wright, who shortly before the publication of Child's book had given widely publicized and highly controversial public lectures in the Eastern seaboard cities advocating women's rights and sexual freedom, was dismissed by Child in a passing reference as a modern disciple of "the infidels of the French revolution Child's attempt at a cultural and societal discussion of the condition" of women is innovative, but her list is quite traditional.
 * Gerda Lerner The Creation of Feminist Consciousness (1993)

 * Feminist writers, not trained historians, were the first to undertake a systematic attempt to approach the problem of women's role in American life and history. This took the form of feminist tracts, theoretical approaches, and compilations of woman's "contributions." The early compilers attacked the subject with a missionary zeal designed, above all, to right wrong. Their tendency was to praise anything women had done as a "contribution" and to include any women who had gained the slightest public attention in their numerous lists. Still, much positive work was done in simply recounting the history of the woman's rights movement and some of its forerunners and in discussing some of the women whose pioneering struggles opened opportunities to others. Feminist writers were hampered by a two-fold bias. First, they shared the middle-class, nativist, moralistic approach of the Progressives and tended to censure out of existence anyone who did not fit into this pattern. Thus we find that women like Frances Wright and Ernestine Rose received little attention because they were considered too radical. "Premature feminists" such as the Grimké sisters, Maria Weston Chapman, and Lydia Maria Child are barely mentioned.
 * Gerda Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History’’ (1979)

title: Lydia Maria Child


text:
Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton (November 9, 1928 - October 4, 1974), born Anne Gray Harvey, was an American poet and writer. She won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry in 1967 for Live or Die.

Quotes

 * We are all writing God's poem.
 * As quoted by Erica Jong, in "Into the lion's den" in The Guardian (26 October 2000)

To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)

 * Even so, I must admire your skill. You are so gracefully insane.
 * "Elegy in the Classroom"
 * Referring to Robert Lowell

 * Love your self's self where it lives. There is no special God to refer to; or if there is, why did I let you grow in another place. You did not know my voice when I came back to call.  All the superlatives of tomorrow's white tree and mistletoe will not help you know the holidays you had to miss.
 * "The Double Image"

 * I rot on the wall, my own Dorian Gray.
 * "The Double Image"

 * I imitate a memory of belief that I do not own.
 * "The Division of Parts"

 * I have ridden in your cart, driver, waved my nude arms at villages going by, learning the last bright routes, survivor where your flames still bite my thigh and my ribs crack where your wheels wind. A woman like that is not ashamed to die. I have been her kind.
 * "Her Kind"

All My Pretty Ones (1962)

 * All who love have lied.
 * "The Operation"

 * Fact: death too is in the egg. Fact: the body is dumb, the body is meat. And tomorrow the O.R. Only the summer was sweet.
 * "The Operation"

 * Need is not quite belief.
 * "With Mercy for the Greedy"

 * Dearest, although everything has happened, nothing has happened.
 * "Letter Written on a Ferry While Crossing Long Island Sound"

 * A woman who writes feels too much, those trances and portents! As if cycles and children and islands weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips and vegetables were never enough. She thinks she can warm the stars. A writer is essentially a spy. Dear love, I am that girl.
 * "The Black Art"

 * It would be pleasant to be drunk: faithless to my tongue and hands, giving up the boundaries for the heroic gin. Dead drunk is the term I think of, insensible, neither cool nor warm, without a head or foot. To be drunk is to be intimate with a fool. I will try it shortly.
 * "Letter Written During a January Northeaster"

 * And what of the dead? They lie without shoes in their stone boats. They are more like stone than the sea would be if it stopped.  They refuse to be blessed, throat, eye and knucklebone.
 * "The Truth the Dead Know"

 * In a dream you are never eighty.
 * "Old"

Live or Die (1966)

 * I was spread out daily and examined for flaws.
 * "Those Times..."

 * I grow old on my bitterness.
 * "Two Sons"

 * Love! That red disease —
 * "Menstruation at Forty"

 * Why have your eyes gone into their own room?
 * "Your Face on the Dog's Neck"

 * But suicides have a special language. Like carpenters they want to know which tools. They never ask why build.
 * "Wanting to Die"

Love Poems (1969)

 * My mouth blooms like a cut. I've been wronged all year, tedious nights, nothing but rough elbows in them and delicate boxes of Kleenex calling crybaby crybaby, you fool!
 * "The Kiss"

 * I am alive when your fingers are.
 * "The Breast"

 * As for me, I am a watercolor. I wash off.
 * "For My Lover, Returning to His Wife"

 * You said the anger would come back just as the love did.
 * Again and Again and Again"

 * He puts his bones back on, Turning the clock back an hour. She knows flesh, that skin balloon, the unbound limbs, the boards, the roof, the removable roof. She is his selection, part time. You know the story too! Look, when it is over he places her, like a phone, back on the hook.
 * "You All Know the Story of the Other Woman"

 * Catch me. I'm your disease.
 * "Eighteen Days Without You": December 18th

Transformations (1971)

 * Beauty is a simple passion, but, oh my friends, in the end you will dance the fire dance in iron shoes.
 * "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"

The Book of Folly (1972)

 * With a tongue like a razor he will kiss the mother, the child, and we three will color the stars black in memory of his mother who kept him chained to the food tree or turned him on and off like a water faucet and made women through all these hazy years the enemy with a heart of lies.
 * "The Wifebeater"

 * In my sights I carve him like a sculptor. I mold out his last look at everyone. I carry his eyes and his brain bone at every position. I know his male sex and I do march over him with my index finger. His mouth and his anus are one. I am at the center of feeling.
 * "The Assassin"

 * My eyes, those sluts, those whores, would play no more.
 * "Killing the Spring"

A Small Journal (1974)
ed. Howard Moss

 * It doesn't matter who my father was; it matters who I remember he was.
 * "The Poet's Story," January 1, 1972 entry

The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975)

 * The tongue, the Chinese say, is like a sharp knife: it kills without drawing blood.
 * "The Dead Heart"

 * I am, each day, typing out the God my typewriter believes in. Very quick. Very intense, like a wolf at a live heart.
 * "Frenzy"

45 Mercy Street (1976)

 * What can I do with this memory? Shake the bones out of it? Defoliate the smile? Stub out the chin with cigarettes? Take the face of the man I love and squeeze my foot into it, when all the while my heart is making a museum? I love you the way the oboe plays. I love you the way skinny dipping makes my body feel. I love you the way a ripe artichoke tastes. Yet I fear you, as one in the desert fears the sun.
 * "Waking Alone" from The Divorce Papers

 * I am murdering me, where I kneeled at your kiss. I am pushing knives through the hands that created two into one. Our hands do not bleed at this, they lie still in their dishonor.
 * "Killing the Love" from The Divorce Papers

 * I am stuffing your mouth with your promises and watching you vomit them out upon my face.
 * "Killing the Love"

 * There is rust in my mouth, the stain of an old kiss.
 * "The Lost Lie" from The Divorce Papers

Words for Dr. Y (1978)

 * Death, I need my little addiction to you. need that tiny voice who, even as I rise from the sea, all woman, all there, says kill me, kill me.
 * "Letters to Dr. Y."

 * I begin again, Dr.Y, this neverland journal, full of my own sense of filth. Why else keep a journal, if not to examine your own filth?
 * "Letters to Dr. Y."

 * God is only mocked by believers.
 * "Letters to Dr. Y."

 * Blue eyes wash off sometimes.
 * "Letters to Dr. Y."

 * Here in the hospital, I say, that is not my body, not my body. I am not here for the doctors to read like a recipe.
 * "August 17th" from Scorpio, Bad Spider, Die: The Horoscope Poems

Poems 1971-1973 (1981)

 * We all walk softly away. We would stay and be the nurse but there are too many of us and we are too worried to help. It is love that walks away and yet we have terrible mouths and soft milk hands. We worry with like. We walk away like love.
 * "To Like, To Love"

 * Earth, earth riding your merry-go-round toward extinction, right to the roots thickening the oceans like gravy, festering in your caves, you are becoming a latrine.
 * "As It Was Written" from Last Poems

 * To love another is something like prayer and it can't be planned, you just fall into its arms because your belief undoes your disbelief.
 * "Admonitions to a Special Person" (1974) from Last Poems Wikiquote-logo.svg QOTD 2007·11·09 Sound file

title: Anne Sexton