Quotes from Sylvia Plath

But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless 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 at.

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 I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.

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. It

I decided not to go down to the cafeteria for breakfast. It would only mean getting dressed, and what was the point of getting dressed if you were staying in bed for the morning?

Mr. Manzi stood at the bottom of the big, rickety old amphitheater, making blue flames and red flares and clouds of yellow stuff by pouring the contents of one test tube into another, and I shut his voice out of my ears by pretending it was only a mosquito in the distance and sat back enjoying the bright lights and the colored fires and wrote page after page of villanelles and sonnets.

At about this point I began to feel peculiar. I looked round me at all the rows of rapt little heads with the same silver glow on them at the front and the same black shadow on them at the back, and they looked nothing more or less than a lot of stupid moonbrains.

I stepped on as many feet as I could because it took my mind off this enormous desire to puke that was ballooning up in front of me so fast I couldn't see round it.

And I knew that in spite of all the roses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat.

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 numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state.

The moon has nothing to be sad about, Staring from her hood of bone. She is used to this type of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.

Piece by piece, as at the strokes of a dull godmother's wand, the old world sprang back into position.

After each wave it would fade away and leave me limp as a wet leaf and shivering all over and then I would feel it rising up in me again, and the glittering white torture-chamber tiles under my feet and over my head and on all four sides closed in and squeezed me to pieces.

Winning or losing an argument, receiving an acceptance or rejection, is no proof of the validity or value of personal identity.

She looked loving and reproachful, and I wanted her to go away.

And now I Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas. The child's cry Melts in the wall. And I Am the arrow, That dew that flies Suicidal, at one with the drive Into the red Eye, the cauldron of morning. --from Ariel, written 27 October 1962

and they all wanted to adopt me in some way, and, for the price of their care and influence, have me resemble them.

What did my fingers do before they held him? What did my heart do, with its love?

Even the sun-clouds this morning cannot manage such skirts. Nor the woman in the ambulance Whose red heart blooms through her coat so astoundingly – A gift, a love gift Utterly unasked for By a sky Palely and flamily Igniting its carbon monoxides, by eyes Dulled to a halt under bowlers. Oh my God, what am I That these late mouths should cry open In a forest of frosts, in a dawn of cornflowers.

Unless you can be yourself, you won't stay with anyone for long.

Jeg er ikke sikker på hvorfor, men jeg elsker mat mer enn nesten noe annet. Samme hvor mye jeg spiser, legger jeg aldri på meg. Med ett unntak har jeg veid det samme i årevis.

There is a green in the air, Soft, delectable. It cushions me lovingly.

Det må være en god del ting et varmt bad ikke kurerer, men jeg vet ikke om mange av dem. Hver gang jeg føler meg trist fordi jeg skal dø, eller så nervøs at jeg ikke får sove, eller forelsket i noen jeg ikke kommer til å se på en uke, gir jeg etter til et visst punkt, og så sier jeg; Jeg går og tar et varmt bad.

A heavy naughtiness pricked through my veins, irritating and attractive as the hurt of a loose tooth.

You are twenty. You are not dead, although you were dead. The girl who died. And was resurrected. Children. Witches. Magic. Symbols. Remember the illogic of the fantasy. The strange tableau in the closet behind the bathroom: the feast, the beast, and the jelly-bean. Recall, remember: please do not die again.