You have to look back at all those bad words, bad metaphors, everything started wrong, and then see how it came into being, the slow progress of it, because you’re always fighting to find out what it was you want to say. You’ve got to go deeper and deeper each time. You wonder why you didn’t drown at the time–deeper and deeper.
Anne Sexton, on the writing process from an interview with Patricia Marx featured in No Evil Star (via star-eaters)