Quotes from Sylvia Plath

My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you.

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.

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 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.

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?

It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water.

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.

I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I'd never seen before in my life.

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. --from Elm, written 19 April 1962

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

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

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.

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.

Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled "enemy?

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. --from Elm, written 19 April 1962

At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do. --from Daddy, written 12 October 1962

I knew you'd decide to be all right again.

The blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain.

I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next day had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue.

Wear your heart on your skin in this life.

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 present and commit suicide.

I laugh, and my lipstick leaves a red stain like a bloody crescent moon on the top of the beer can.

Character is fate.

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.