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… - Sylvia Plath

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.

So many of us!
So many of us! We are shelves, we are
Tables, we are meek,
We are edible, Nudgers and shovers
In spite of ourselves.
Our kind multiplies: We shall by morning
Inherit the earth.
Our foot's in the door.

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

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 some private, totalitarian state.