Sylvia Plath Quotes

The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.

The woman is perfected
Her dead Body wears the smile of accomplishment,
The illusion of a Greek necessity Flows in the scrolls of her toga,
Her bare Feet seem to be saying:
We have come so far, it is over. Each dead child coiled, a white serpent,
One at each little Pitcher of milk, now empty.
She has folded Them back into her body as petals
Of a rose close when the garden Stiffens and odors bleed
From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower. The moon has nothing to be sad about,
Staring from her hood of bone. She is used to this sort of thing.
Her blacks crackle and drag.

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

I never feel so much myself as when I'm in a hot bath.

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.

Everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end.

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?

"I have taken a pill to kill
The thin
Papery feeling. — from "Cut", written 24 October 1962"

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.

"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."

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.

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.

I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don't ask me who I am.

Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk. It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

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?