is like a sharp knife:
it kills
without drawing blood." - Meaning and context.">
"The Dead Heart"
“

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

— Anne Sexton

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The tongue, the Chinese say,
is like a sharp knife:
it kills
without drawing blood." in the context of ""The Dead Heart"" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Anne Sexton" (Quotes, The Awful Rowing Toward God (1975)) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app
Anne Sexton

About 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.