Quotes from Sylvia Plath

At least it gets me out of that incredible sense of constriction which I have on trying to find subjects for small bad poems, and feeling always that they should be perfect, which gives me that slick shiny artificial look.

I shall move north. I shall move into a long blackness. I see myself as a shadow, neither man nor woman, Neither a woman, happy to be like a man, nor a man Blunt and flat enough to feel no lack. I feel a lack. I hold my fingers up, ten white pickets. See, the darkness is leaking from the cracks. I cannot contain it. I cannot contain my life.

we overheard one girl say to another: "Betsy is depressed today." It seems almost an incredible relief to know that there is someone outside oneself who is not happy all the time. We must be at low ebb when we are this far into the black: that everyone else, merely because they are "other", is invulnerable. That is a damn lie.

I really love this city above any I've ever been in; it is dear and graceful and elegant and what one makes it.

It all flowed over me with a screaming ache of pain . . . remember, remember, this is now, and now and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I don't want to blot the fear out, and blur the edges of living now. I want to become acutely aware of all that I've taken for granted. When you feel that this is the good bye, the last time, it hits you harder.

I knew perfectly well the cars were making a noise, and the people in them and behind the lit windows of the buildings were making a noise, and the river was making a noise, but I couldn't hear a thing.

And get this, I'm with you. Don't stop talking to me, please. It's as important as if we were the only people alive . . . .

Nossos sonhos podem obscurecer as linhas intransigentes que desenham os contornos que nos aprisionam?

Almost, I think, the unreasoning, bestial purity was best.

When Ted and I begin living together we shall become a team better than Mr. and Mrs. Yeats

This is not what I meant: Stucco arches, the banked rocks sunning in rows, Bald eyes or petrified eggs, Grownups coffined in stockings and jackets, Lard-pale, sipping the thin Air like a medicine.

This loneliness will blur and diminish, no doubt, when tomorrow I plunge again into classes, into the necessity of studying for exams. But now, that false purpose is lifted and I am spinning in a temporary vacuum. At home I rested and played, here, where I work, the routine is momentarily suspended and I am lost.

my inspiration is paintings and not music when I go to some other art form . . . I see these things very clearly.

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.

I beamed benevolently at them over my third atheistic cup of coffee and ate my existentialist egg;

ache and ache to return to my proper place, which is curled up right there, sheltered and cherished

Your shelled bed I remember Father, this thick air is murderous I would breathe water

But I am I now; and so many other millions are so irretrievably their own special variety of I that I can hardly bear to think of it. I: how firm a letter; how reassuring the three strokes: one vertical, proud and assertive, and then the two short horizontal lines in quick, smug succession. The pen scratches on the paper... I... I... I... I... I... I.

It is as if, by concentrating on the "inscape", as Hopkins says, of leaf and plant and animal, I can know the world a new and special way; and make up my own versions of it.

Tomorrow I will be sweet God, I will set them free. The box is only temporary.

So come, and slowly we will walk through green gardens and marvel at this strange and sweet world.

must work for a state in myself which is stoic: the old state of working & waiting. I have had the most unfortunate hap: the bright glittery youth from 17 to 20 and then the break-up and the dead lull while I fight to make the experiences of my early maturity available to my typewriter.

Your absence is inconspicuous; Nobody can tell what I lack.

I am too pure for you or anyone.