200+ Quotes & Sayings By Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath was an American poet. Her most famous work is "The Bell Jar." She was born on October 27, 1932 in Boston, Massachusetts. She served as a volunteer at the Cambridge Hospital where she met Ted Hughes. They married on September 3, 1956 Read more

Plath died on February 11, 1963 after taking her own life.

1
Yes, I was infatuated with you: I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren't having any of those. Sylvia Plath
I have never found anybody who could stand to accept...
2
I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give. Sylvia Plath
How we need another soul to cling to, another body...
3
How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into. Sylvia Plath
Living with him is like being told a perpetual story:...
4
Living with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, most imaginative I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever. Sylvia Plath
5
I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don't want to look around any more: I don't need to look around for anything. . Sylvia Plath
What a man wants is a mate and what a...
6
What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinite security, ’ and, ‘What a man is is an arrow into the future and a what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from. Sylvia Plath
7
I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited. Sylvia Plath
Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live...
8
Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted. Sylvia Plath
I wonder why I don't go to bed and go...
9
I wonder why I don't go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip on hour more of sleep and live. Sylvia Plath
10
But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get. Sylvia Plath
11
So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough. Sylvia Plath
12
Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. And then I'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is. Sylvia Plath
13
I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. Nothing more than an empty house, the warm hazy weariness from a day spent setting strawberry runners in the sun, a glass of cool sweet milk, and a shallow dish of blueberries bathed in cream. When one is so tired at the end of a day one must sleep, and at the next dawn there are more strawberry runners to set, and so one goes on living, near the earth. At times like this I'd call myself a fool to ask for more.. . Sylvia Plath
14
Life was not to be sitting in hot amorphic leisure in my backyard idly writing or not writing, as the spirit moved me. It was, instead, running madly, in a crowded schedule, in a squirrel cage of busy people. Working, living, dancing, dreaming, talking, kissing- singing, laughing, learning. Sylvia Plath
15
I saw the years of my life spaced along a road in the form of telephone poles threaded together by wires. I counted one, two, three... nineteen telephone poles, and then the wires dangled into space, and try as I would, I couldn't see a single pole beyond the nineteenth. Sylvia Plath
I have stitched life into me like a rare organ
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I have stitched life into me like a rare organ Sylvia Plath
17
There are times when a feeling of expectancy comes to me, as if something is there, beneath the surface of my understanding, waiting for me to grasp it. It is the same tantalizing sensation when you almost remember a name, but don't quite reach it. I can feel it when I think of human beings, of the hints of evolution suggested by the removal of wisdom teeth, the narrowing of the jaw no longer needed to chew such roughage as it was accustomed to; the gradual disappearance of hair from the human body; the adjustment of the human eye to the fine print, the swift, colored motion of the twentieth century. The feeling comes, vague and nebulous, when I consider the prolonged adolesence of our species; the rites of birth, marriage and death; all the primitive, barbaric ceremonies streamlined to modern times. Almost, I think, the unreasoning, bestial purity was best. Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. And then I'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is. Sylvia Plath
I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in...
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I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket. Sylvia Plath
19
Hurl yourself at goals above your head and bear the lacerations that come when you slip and make a fool of yourself. Try always, as long as you have breath in your body, to take the hard way—and work, work, work to build yourself into a rich, continually evolving entity. Sylvia Plath
There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you...
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There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends. Sylvia Plath
21
The truth comes to me. The truth loves me. Sylvia Plath
22
I am not cruel –only truthful. Sylvia Plath
23
I talk to God but the sky is empty. Sylvia Plath
God, who am I?
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God, who am I? Sylvia Plath
25
I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery–air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy. Sylvia Plath
Is anyone anywhere happy?
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Is anyone anywhere happy? Sylvia Plath
I may never be happy, but tonight I am content.
27
I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. Sylvia Plath
28
How can I tell Bob that my happiness streams from having wrenched a piece out of my life, a piece of hurt and beauty, and transformed it to typewritten words on paper? How can he know I am justifying my life, my keen emotions, my feeling, by turning it into print? Sylvia Plath
Dying is an art. Like everything else, I do it...
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Dying is an art. Like everything else, I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I have a call. Sylvia Plath
30
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one’s head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace. Sylvia Plath
31
I told him I believed in hell, and that certain people, like me, had to live in hell before they died, to make up for missing out on it after death, since they didn't believe in life after death, and what each person believed happened to him when he died. Sylvia Plath
The thought that I might kill myself formed in my...
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The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower. Sylvia Plath
33
LADY LAZARUSI have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it-- A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?-- The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth? The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three.What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot-- The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone, Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. It's easy enough to do it in a cell. It's easy enough to do it and stay put. It's the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout:' A miracle! ' That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart-- It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor.So, Herr Enemy.I am your opus, I am your valuable, The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash-- You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there-- A cake of soap, A wedding ring, A gold filling. Herr God, Herr LuciferBewareBeware.Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air. Sylvia Plath
I’ll never speak to God again.
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I’ll never speak to God again. Sylvia Plath
The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick...
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The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of storeys, you might still be alive when you hit bottom. Sylvia Plath
What I fear most, I think, is the death of...
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What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination. Sylvia Plath
37
I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free–– The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet. Sylvia Plath
The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper,...
38
The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper, Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars Letting in the light, peephole after peephole--- A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things. Sylvia Plath
Not easy to state the change you made. If I'm...
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Not easy to state the change you made. If I'm alive now, I was dead, Though, like a stone, unbothered by it. Sylvia Plath
My flesh winced, in cowardice, from such a death.
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My flesh winced, in cowardice, from such a death. Sylvia Plath
41
The human mind is so limited it can only build an arbitrary heaven – and usually the physical comforts they endow it with are naively the kind that can be perceived as we humans perceive – nothing more. No: perhaps I will awake to find myself burning in hell. I think not. I think I will be snuffed out. Black is sleep; black is a fainting spell; and black is death, with no light, no waking. Sylvia Plath
I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me...
42
I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here. Sylvia Plath
43
I?I walk alone; The midnight street Spins itself from under my feet; My eyes shut These dreaming houses all snuff out; Through a whim of mine Over gables the moon's celestial onion Hangs high. I Make houses shrink And trees diminish By going far; my look's leash Dangles the puppet-people Who, unaware how they dwindle, Laugh, kiss, get drunk, Nor guess that if I choose to blink They die. I When in good humour, Give grass its green Blazon sky blue, and endow the sun With gold; Yet, in my wintriest moods, I hold Absolute power To boycott color and forbid any flower To be. I Know you appear Vivid at my side, Denying you sprang out of my head, Claiming you feel Love fiery enough to prove flesh real, Though it's quite clear All your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear, From me." Soliloquy of the Solipsist", 1956. Sylvia Plath
44
I Am VerticalBut I would rather be horizontal. I am not a tree with my root in the soil Sucking up minerals and motherly love So that each March I may gleam into leaf, Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted, Unknowing I must soon unpetal. Compared with me, a tree is immortal And a flower-head not tall, but more startling, And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring. Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars, The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors. I walk among them, but none of them are noticing. Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping I must most perfectly resemble them-- Thoughts gone dim. It is more natural to me, lying down. Then the sky and I are in open conversation, And I shall be useful when I lie down finally: The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me." I Am Vertical", 28 March 1961 . Sylvia Plath
I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in...
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I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. Sylvia Plath
Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions?...
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Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness? Sylvia Plath
The blood jet is poetry There is no stopping it.
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The blood jet is poetry There is no stopping it. Sylvia Plath
O love, how did you get here?-- Nick and the...
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O love, how did you get here?-- Nick and the Candlestick Sylvia Plath
Stars open among the lilies. Are you not blinded by...
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Stars open among the lilies. Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens? This is the silence of astounded souls. Sylvia Plath
Writing, then, was a substitute for myself: if you don't...
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Writing, then, was a substitute for myself: if you don't love me, love my writing & love me for my writing. It is also much more: a way of ordering and reordering the chaos of experience. Sylvia Plath
I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out...
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I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love. Sylvia Plath
I am solitary as grass. What is it I miss?...
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I am solitary as grass. What is it I miss? Shall I ever find it, whatever it is? Sylvia Plath
But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much...
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But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much good. Sylvia Plath
Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after...
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Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it Sylvia Plath
The moon is no door. It is a face in...
55
The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here. Sylvia Plath
56
This is newness: every little tawdry Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar, Glinting and clinking in a saint's falsetto. Only you Don't know what to make of the sudden slippiness, The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant. There's no getting up it by the words you know. No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe. We have only come to look. You are too new To want the world in a glass hat. Sylvia Plath
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung...
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I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.( I think I made you up inside my head.) Sylvia Plath
Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue
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Stasis in darkness. Then the substanceless blue Sylvia Plath
Brave love, dreamnot of staunching such strict flame, but come,...
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Brave love, dreamnot of staunching such strict flame, but come, lean to my wound; burn on, burn on. Sylvia Plath
The still waters Wrap my lips, Eyes, nose and ears,...
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The still waters Wrap my lips, Eyes, nose and ears, A clear Cellophane I cannot crack. Sylvia Plath
61
Although, I admit, I desire, Occasionally, some backtalk From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain: A certain minor light may still Lean incandescent Out of kitchen table or chair As if a celestial burning took Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then -- Sylvia Plath
And by the way, everything in life is writable about...
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And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. Sylvia Plath
Let me live, love, and say it well in good...
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Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences Sylvia Plath
64
Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over dramatize it, or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones. At any rate, you never write it quite the way you want to. Sylvia Plath
65
I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head. Sylvia Plath
Feel oddly barren. My sickness is when words draw in...
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Feel oddly barren. My sickness is when words draw in their horns and the physical world refuses to be ordered, recreated, arranged and selected. I am a victim of it then, not a master. Sylvia Plath
I don't see, ' I said, 'how people stand being...
67
I don't see, ' I said, 'how people stand being old. Your insides all dry up. When you're young you're so self-reliant. You don't even need much religion. Sylvia Plath
68
All, all, becomes profitable. Education is of the most satisfying and available nature. I am at Smith! Which two years ago was a doubtful dream - and that fortuitous change of dream to reality has led me to desire more, and to lash myself onward - onward. Sylvia Plath
69
And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault after fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him.. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the coloured arrows from a Fourth of July rocket. Sylvia Plath
There was a beautiful time...
70
There was a beautiful time... Sylvia Plath
I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of...
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I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print, the way you crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful big green fig-tree. Sylvia Plath
72
Amazing how money would simplify problems like ours. We wouldn't go wild at all, but write & travel & study all of our lives - which I hope we do anyway. And have a house apart, by the side of no road, with country about & a study & walls of bookcases. Sylvia Plath
Talking about my fears to others feeds it.
73
Talking about my fears to others feeds it. Sylvia Plath
We should meet in another life, we should meet in...
74
We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you. Sylvia Plath
75
So, now I shall talk every night. To myself. To the moon. I shall walk, as I did tonight, jealous of my loneliness, in the blue-silver of the cold moon, shining brilliantly on the drifts of fresh-fallen snow, with the myriad sparkles. I talk to myself and look at the dark trees, blessedly neutral. So much easier than facing people, than having to look happy, invulnerable, clever. With masks down, I walk, talking to the moon, to the neutral impersonal force that does not hear, but merely accepts my being. And does not smite me down. Sylvia Plath
Then it hit me and I just blurted, 'I like...
76
Then it hit me and I just blurted, 'I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them. Sylvia Plath
I love the people, ' I said. 'I have room...
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I love the people, ' I said. 'I have room in me for love, and for ever so many little lives. Sylvia Plath
Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and...
78
Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled “enemy? Sylvia Plath
In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat...
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In the German tongue, in the Polish town Scraped flat by the roller Of wars, wars, wars ... Sylvia Plath
80
Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars–to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording–all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.. . Sylvia Plath
81
I don't see what women see in other women, " I'd told Doctor Nolan in my interview that noon. "What does a woman see in a woman that she can't see in a man?" Doctor Nolan paused. Then she said, "Tenderness. Sylvia Plath
I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in...
82
I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me. Sylvia Plath
83
So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state. Sylvia Plath
84
I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after Ihad children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state. Sylvia Plath
85
And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat. Sylvia Plath
86
I tried to imagine what it would be like if Constantin were my husband. It would mean getting up at seven and cooking him eggs and bacon and toast andcoffee and dawdling about in my nightgown and curlers after he'd left for work to wash up the dirty plates and make the bed, and then when he came home after a lively, fascinating day he'd expect a big dinner, and I'd spend the evening washing up even more dirty plates till I fell into bed, utterly exhausted. This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A's, but I knew that's what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard's mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself. Sylvia Plath
87
This woman lawyer said the best men wanted to be pure for their wives, and even if they weren't pure, they wanted to be the ones to teach their wives about sex. Of course they would try to persuade a girl to have sex and say they would marry her later, but assoon as she gave in, they would lose all respect for her and start saying that if she did that with them she would do that with other men and they would end up by making her lifemiserable. Sylvia Plath
88
And of course I didn't know who would marry me now that I'd been where I had been. I didn't know at all. Sylvia Plath
89
A man's world is different from a woman's world and a man's emotions are different from a woman's emotions and only marriage can bring the two different sets of emotions together properly. Sylvia Plath
90
And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs Willard's kitchen mat Sylvia Plath
91
The main point of the article was that a man's world is different from a women's world and a man's emotions are different from a women's emotions and only marriage can bring the two worlds and the two different sets of emotions together properly. Sylvia Plath
92
My dream was one day ordering a drink and finding out it tasted wonderful. Sylvia Plath
93
Dancing is the normal prelude to intercourse Sylvia Plath
94
This boy - his name was Eric - said he thought it disgusting the way all the girls at my college stood around on the porches under the porch lights and in the bushes in plain view, necking madly before the one o'clock curfew, so everybody passing by could see them. A million years of evolution, Eric said bitterly, and what are we? Animals. Sylvia Plath
95
What is so real as the cry of a child? A rabbit's cry may be wilder But it has no soul. Sylvia Plath
96
A little thing, like children putting flowers in my hair, can fill up the widening cracks in my self-assurance like soothing lanolin. Sylvia Plath
97
Between Sylvia and me there existed as between my own mother and me - a sort of psychic osmosis which, at times, was very wonderful and comforting; at other times an unwelcome invasion of privacy (words from Aurelia Plath from the Introduction) Sylvia Plath
98
Nick and the CandlestickI am a miner. The light burns blue. Waxy stalactites Drip and thicken, tears The earthen womb Exudes from its dead boredom. Black bat airs Wrap me, raggy shawls, Cold homicides. They weld to me like plums. Old cave of calcium Icicles, old echoer. Even the newts are white, Those holy Joes.And the fish, the fish ----Christ! they are panes of ice, A vice of knives, A piranha Religion, drinking Its first communion out of my live toes. The candle Gulps and recovers its small altitude, Its yellows hearten. O love, how did you get here? O embryo Remembering, even in sleep, Your crossed position. The blood blooms clean In you, ruby. The pain You wake to is not yours. Love, love, I have hung our cave with roses, With soft rugs ----The last of Victoriana. Let the stars Plummet to their dark address, Let the mercuric Atoms that cripple drip Into the terrible well, You are the one Solid the spaces lean on, envious. You are the baby in the barn. Sylvia Plath
99
Being born a woman is my awful tragedy. From the moment I was conceived I was doomed to sprout breasts and ovaries rather than penis and scrotum; to have my whole circle of action, thought and feeling rigidly circumscribed by my inescapable feminity. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars--to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording--all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.. Sylvia Plath
100
If a man chooses to be promiscuous, he may still turn up his nose at promiscuity. He may still demand a woman be faithful to him, to save him from his own lust. But women have lust, too. Why should they be relegated to the position of custodian of emotions, watcher of the infants, feeder of soul, body and pride of man? Sylvia Plath