Quotes from Sylvia Plath

Poetry, I feel, is a tyrannical discipline. You've got to go so far, so fast, in such a small space that you've just got to burn away all the peripherals

I don't see, I said, how people stand being old. Your insides all dry up. When you're young you're so self-reliant. You don't even need much religion.

There's something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you're the only extra person in the room.

Tudom – mondta csöndesen Tracy –, de mégis meg fogsz változni, akár akarod, akár nem. Semmi nem marad ugyanaz. Semmi, gondolta Millicent. Milyen rémes is lenne, ha az ember sosem változna… ha az élete végéig az a néhány évvel korábbi, unalmas és szégyenlÅ's Millicent maradna. Szerencsére azonban az ember mindig változik, fejlÅ'dik, halad. (Beavatás)

Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then say 'I'll go take a hot bath'.

the city hung in my window, flat as a poster, glittering and blinking, but it might just as well not have been there at all, for the good it did me.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again.

That's one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was an infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the coloured arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig-tree, straving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle an go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

I smile with equanimity and do not cherish grudges, as most of us adults do, letting them fester like a cancer. But I let my emotions run on the same forgiving and transient track.

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 my throat and I'd cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.

I was only purely happy until I was nine years old. I had never really been happy again.

The sickness rolled through me in great waves

And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault after fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him. The same thing happened over and over: 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.

Piece by piece, I fed my wardrobe to the night wind, and flutteringly, like a loved one's ashes, the grey scraps were ferried off, to settle here, there, exactly where I would never know, in the dark heart of New York.

The domesticated wilderness of pine, maple and oak rolled to a halt and stuck in the frame of the train window like a bad picture.

I felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.

He was always saying how his mother said, 'What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinite security,' and, 'What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a women is is the place the arrow shoots off from,' until it made me tired. That's one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing i wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots of from. I wanted change and exitement and to shoot off in all directions myself

morrer é uma arte, como tudo o mais. nisso sou excepcional. desse jeito faço parecer infernal. desse jeito faço parecer real. vão dizer que tenho vocação

The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoot off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in al directions myself.

The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in al directions myself.

The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself.

I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time...

My dream was someday ordering a drink and finding out it tasted wonderful.