Sylvia Plath Quotes

I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of the throat and I'd cry for a week.

Is anyone anywhere happy?

The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.

I may never be happy, but tonight I am content.

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.

"It's a tango." Marco maneuvered me out among the dancers. "I love tangos." "I can't dance." "You don't have to dance. I'll do that dancing." Marco hooked an arm around my waist and jerked me up against his dazzling white suit. Then he said, "Pretend you are drowning." I shut my eyes, and the music broke over me like a rainstorm. Marco's leg slid forward against mine and my leg slid back and I seemed to be riveted against him, limb for limb, moving as he moved, without any will or knowledge of my own, and after a while I thought, "It doesn't take two to dance, it only takes one," and I let myself blow and bend like a tree in the wind. "What did I tell you?" Marco's breath scorched my ear. "You're a perfectly respectable dancer."

Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer,
Beware.
Beware. Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

"I hate her," I said, and waited for the blow to fall. But Doctor Nolan only smiled at me as if something had pleased her very, very much and said, "I suppose you do."

"I am too pure for you or anyone.

From the poem "Fever 103°", 20 October 1962"

You said you would kill it this morning.
Do not kill it. It startles me still,
The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing Through the uncut grass on the elm's hill.
It is something to own a pheasant,
Or just to be visited at all. I am not mystical: it isn't
As if I thought it had a spirit.
It is simply in its element. That gives it a kingliness, a right.

I don’t care about anyone, and the feeling is quite obviously mutual.

Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel.

That would fix a lot of people.

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.

"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 powerful — but to what extent? I am I."