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9bda0c6
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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.
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Sylvia Plath |
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8fca445
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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.
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yearning
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Sylvia Plath |
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9e6c326
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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..
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Sylvia Plath |
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abea067
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I write only because There is a voice within me That will not be still
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Sylvia Plath |
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714a0fd
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And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness.
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moving
leaving
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Sylvia Plath |
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0850ec2
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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.
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writing
plath
sylvia
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Sylvia Plath |
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f8f980f
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Out of the ash I rise with my red hair and I eat men like air.
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Sylvia Plath |
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8ffe280
|
I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit. I have none of the selfless love of my mother. I have none of the plodding, practical love. . . . . I am, to be blunt and concise, in love only with myself, my puny being with its small inadequate breasts and meager, thin talents. I am capable of affection for those who reflect my own world.
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Sylvia Plath |
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689f616
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The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther.
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Sylvia Plath |
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f08ceaa
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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.
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writing
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Sylvia Plath |
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e86912a
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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 ..
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marriage
romance
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Sylvia Plath |
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a41a4c0
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I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.
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poetry
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Sylvia Plath |
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bdfd222
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I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth.
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Sylvia Plath |
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3e822e8
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Eternity bores me, I never wanted it. From the poem "Years", 16 November 1962"
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Sylvia Plath |
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4c7af18
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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.
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profound
hell
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Sylvia Plath |
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0b7a1a2
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What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.
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Sylvia Plath |
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cbccdf2
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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.
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the-bell-jar
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Sylvia Plath |
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4b606ff
|
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 sk..
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Sylvia Plath |
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62ab365
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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 sk..
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Sylvia Plath |
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4ce1bf6
|
If you love her", I said, "you'll love somebody else someday."
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Sylvia Plath |
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def686c
|
Let's face it: I'm scared, scared and frozen. First, I guess I'm afraid for myself... the old primitive urge for survival. It's getting so I live every moment with terrible intensity. It all flowed over me with a screaming ache of pain... 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. When you feel that this may be good-bye, the last time, it hi..
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Sylvia Plath |
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a976fc4
|
How frail the human heart must be--a mirrored pool of thought.
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human-heart
thought
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Sylvia Plath |
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755a1cc
|
If they substituted the word 'Lust' for 'Love' in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth.
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song-lyrics
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Sylvia Plath |
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a9ac608
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I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.
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sleep
sylvia-plath
soul
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Sylvia Plath |
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dda476b
|
So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.
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plath
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Sylvia Plath |
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a379176
|
I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn't taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers' sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.
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drinking
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Sylvia Plath |
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4193c97
|
If I didn't think, I'd be much happier; if I didn't have any sex organs, I wouldn't waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time.
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Sylvia Plath |
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7bb4d6d
|
There I went again, building up a glamorous picture of a man who would love me passionately the minute he met me, and all out of a few prosy nothings.
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Sylvia Plath |
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c3b761d
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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. Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart? I am incapable of more knowledge. What is this, this face So murderous in its strangle of branches? - Its snaky acids kiss. It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill. ..
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Sylvia Plath |
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7e576d3
|
Ever since I was small I loved feeling somebody comb my hair. It made me go all sleepy and peaceful.
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Sylvia Plath |
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a9c5458
|
What did my fingers do before they held him? What did my heart do, with its love? From " Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices", 1962"
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Sylvia Plath |
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0aefa5e
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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.
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marriage
children
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sylvia plath |
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7d0a8d4
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People or stars Regard me sadly, I disappoint them. From the poem "Sheep in Fog", 2 December 1962, 28 January 1963"
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Sylvia Plath |
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22e3feb
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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.
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suicide
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Sylvia Plath |
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5f6e3ee
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I Am Vertical But 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 th..
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tree
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Sylvia Plath |
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d13bab3
|
At this rate, I'd be lucky if I wrote a page a day. Then I knew what the problem was. I needed experience. How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die? A girl I knew had just won a prize for a short story about her adventures among the pygmies in Africa. How could I compete with that sort of thing?
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Sylvia Plath |
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0f10e15
|
Is anyone anywhere happy?
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Sylvia Plath |
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44dd592
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How can you be so many women to so many strange people, oh you strange girl?
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Sylvia Plath |
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79d755a
|
I am too pure for you or anyone. From the poem "Fever 103deg", 20 October 1962"
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Sylvia Plath |
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7b86410
|
I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come.
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the-bell-jar
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Sylvia Plath |
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f73893d
|
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.
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Sylvia Plath |
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d420601
|
What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid. 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.
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Sylvia Plath |
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49bae43
|
It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it.
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sadness
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Sylvia Plath |
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a40ae84
|
I guess I should have reacted the way most of the other girls were, but I couldn't get myself to react. I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.
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numbness
stillness
normalcy
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Sylvia Plath |