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60ecacb
|
I wanted to tell her that if only something were wrong with my body it would be fine, I would rather have anything wrong with my body than something wrong with my head, but the idea seemed so involved and wearisome that I didn't say anything. I only burrowed down further in the bed.
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Sylvia Plath |
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e0a2125
|
Do you know what a poem is, Esther?' No, what?' I would say. A piece of dust.' Then, just as he was smiling and starting to look proud, I would say, 'So are the cadavers you cut up. So are the people you think you're curing. They're dust as dust as dust. I reckon a good poem lasts a whole lot longer than a hundred of those people put together.' And of course Buddy wouldn't have any answer to that, because what I said was true. People were m..
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Sylvia Plath |
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d71f2a6
|
I am sure there are things that can't be cured by a good bath but I can't think of one.
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Sylvia Plath |
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42c2d90
|
I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don't ask me who I am.
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Sylvia Plath |
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1262e1f
|
Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through.
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Sylvia Plath |
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905f093
|
I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn't do at all.
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Sylvia Plath |
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0105574
|
It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water.
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Sylvia Plath |
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781ec2a
|
I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I should any more. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I shouldn't, the way Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired.
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Sylvia Plath |
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a156ef5
|
I have taken a pill to kill The thin Papery feeling.
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Sylvia Plath |
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86780f9
|
I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
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depression
fear
poetry
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Sylvia Plath |
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22e5442
|
My world falls apart, crumbles, "The centre cannot hold." There is no integrating force, only the naked fear, the urge of self-preservation. I am afraid. I am not solid, but hollow. I feel behind my eyes a numb, paralysed cavern, a pit of hell, a mimicking nothingness. I never thought. I never wrote, I never suffered. I want to kill myself, to escape from responsibility, to crawl back abjectly into the womb. I do not know who I am, where I ..
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Sylvia Plath |
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09865fd
|
Is it the sea you hear in me? Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness? Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it.
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Sylvia Plath |
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a825e60
|
I felt dumb and subdued. Every time I tried to concentrate, my mind glided off, like a skater, into a large empty space, and pirouetted there, absently.
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Sylvia Plath |
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1cad6e7
|
LADY LAZARUS I 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 li..
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depression
poetry
suicide
|
sylvia plath |
|
ad3e181
|
I hated men because they didn't stay around and love me like a father: I could prick holes in them & show they were no father-material. I made them propose and then showed them they hadn't a chance. I hated men because they didn't have to suffer like a woman did. They could die or go to Spain. They could have fun while a woman had birth pangs. They could gamble while a woman skimped on the butter on the bread. Men, nasty lousy men.
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Sylvia Plath |
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603593c
|
At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.
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Sylvia Plath |
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3faf2ce
|
You are a dream; I hope I never meet you.
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Sylvia Plath |
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e826c41
|
I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who ski better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.
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Sylvia Plath |
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e97e948
|
My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you.
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mother
sylvia-plath
the-bell-jar
think
thinking
too-much
worse
yourself
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Sylvia Plath |
|
95cbfc7
|
I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I'd never seen before in my life.
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Sylvia Plath |
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4bcbc27
|
But I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure at all. How did I know that someday--at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere--the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?
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Sylvia Plath |
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9683ce6
|
The blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain.
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Sylvia Plath |
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ba89e7b
|
I knew you'd decide to be all right again.
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Sylvia Plath |
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9a4ba9c
|
Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.
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Sylvia Plath |
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b632190
|
Character is fate.
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Sylvia Plath |
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22209fe
|
Wear your heart on your skin in this life.
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tattooing
tattoos
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Sylvia Plath |
|
916fa9d
|
With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can't start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It's like quicksand... hopeless from the start.
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Sylvia Plath |
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3eadb40
|
Everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end.
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Sylvia Plath |
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87ae9ed
|
I may never be happy, but tonight I am content.
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Sylvia Plath |
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69ad639
|
Why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and-cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life?
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Sylvia Plath |
|
7d8ab80
|
I buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night. I couldn't see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.
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|
look-forward
night
pillow
pretend
sleep
sylvia-plath
the-bell-jar
|
Sylvia Plath |
|
c32d80b
|
I wish to cry. Yet, I laugh, and my lipstick leaves a red stain like a bloody crescent moon on the top of the beer can.
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|
sadness
|
Sylvia Plath |
|
a69c5c9
|
I can't deceive myself that out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of pr..
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|
future
loneliness
suicide
|
Sylvia Plath |
|
de758dd
|
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 ..
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people
solitude
|
Sylvia Plath |
|
3a167d0
|
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 foo..
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happiness
journal
life
|
Sylvia Plath |
|
7aad554
|
There is so much hurt in this game of searching for a mate, of testing, trying. And you realize suddenly that you forgot it was a game, and turn away in tears.
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Sylvia Plath |
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229bde6
|
I am afraid of getting older. I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day--spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote. I want to be free. (...) I want, I think, to be omniscient... I think I would like to call myself "The girl who wanted to be God." Yet if I were not in this body, where would I be--perhaps I am destined to be classified and qualified. But, oh, I cry out against it. I am I--I am powerfu..
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Sylvia Plath |
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6c08084
|
Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people.
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Sylvia Plath |
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ff386e7
|
Backward we traveled to reclaim the day Before we fell, like Icarus, undone; All we find are altars in decay And profane words scrawled black across the sun. --From the poem "Doom of the Exiles", written 16 April 1954"
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Sylvia Plath |
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ff7f62f
|
The more hopeless you were, the further away they hid you.
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Sylvia Plath |
|
c334f1a
|
There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room.
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|
depression
|
Sylvia Plath |
|
c0febe6
|
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.
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|
literature
reading
words
|
Sylvia Plath |
|
2d12652
|
It is awful to want to go away and to want to go nowhere.
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Sylvia Plath |
|
cdf16e9
|
No day is safe from news of you.
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|
Sylvia Plath |