Sylvia Plath Quotes

Read widely of others' experiences, even if it'd be more comfortable to snuggle back in the comforting cotton-wool of blissful ignorance.

we walk the plank with strangers.

I felt the first man I slept with must be intelligent, so I could respect him.

I am so hungry for a big smashing creative burgeoning burdened love.

Love, love, I have hung our cave with roses.

I do not know who I am tonight.

I like people, but to learn about one individual always appeals to me more than anything.

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.

Secretly, in studies and attics and schoolrooms all over America, people must be writing.

Perhaps, perhaps this would be the one to pull me out of my plunge.

I decided I would put off the novel until I had gone to Europe and had a lover, and that I would never learn a word of shorthand. If I never learned shorthand I would never have to use it.

Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people.

At twenty I tried to die And get back, back, back to you. I thought even the bones would do.

I'm doped and thick from my last sleeping pill.

I deserve that, don't I, some sort of blazing love that I can live with.

What is so real as the cry of a child? A rabbit's cry may be wilder But it has no soul.

I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living.

I didn't really see why people should look at me. Plenty of people looked queerer than I did.

I don't know how long I kept at it... I felt reasonably safe, streched out on the floor, and lay quite still. It didn't seem to be summer any more

There was a beautiful time.

Not being perfect hurts.

We know a thing by its opposite corollary; hot by having experienced cold; good by having decided what is bad; love by hate.

She looks like a woman who has found it ridiculous to commit herself to a single emotional stance in anything, but must always ride high heavy irony.

My life is a discipline, a prison: I live for my own work, without which I am nothing.

I get into a rut, unable to yank my mind out of it.

Can a selfish egocentric jealous and unimaginative female write a damn thing worthwhile?

A living doll, everywhere you look. It can sew, it can cook, It can talk, talk, talk. . . . My boy, it's your last resort. Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.

Slowly, slowly, catch the monkey.

God, it was good to let go, let the tight mask fall off, and the bewildered, chaotic fragments pour out. It was the purge, the catharsis.

The day I went into physics class it was death.

I had hoped, at my departure, I would feel sure and knowledgeable about everything that lay ahead -- after all, I had been "analyzed." Instead, all I could see were question marks.

Ever since I was small I loved feeling somebody comb my hair. It made me go all sleepy & peaceful.

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 a what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.

Do I like to write? Why? About what? Will I give up and say, "Living and feeding a man's insatiable guts and begetting children occupies my whole life. Don't have time to write"?

Now I am silent, hate Up to my neck, Thick, thick. I do not speak.

I need the reality of other people, work, to fulfill myself. Must never become a mere mother and housewife.

God has to remind us this isn't heaven by a long shot, so he increases the radios and lethal flies.

England offers new comforts. I could write a novel there.

I have the one person I could ever love in this world. Now I must work to be a person worthy of that.

I may never be happy, but tonight I am content. At times like this I'd call myself a fool to ask for more.

I'm never going to get married." "You're crazy." Buddy brightened. "You'll change your mind." "No. My mind's made up.

Every day one has to earn the name of 'writer' over again, with much wrestling.

I was my own woman. The next step was to find the proper sort of man.

I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

I like you, but not too much. I don’t want to like anybody too much.

I think I may well be a Jew.

I think I am worthwhile just because I have optical nerves and can try to put down what they perceive. What a fool!

Death may whiten in sun or out of it.

Let's face it: I'm scared, scared and frozen. First, I guess, I'm afraid for myself...the old primitive urge for survival. It's getting so I live every moment with terrible intensity.

I, love, I am the pure acetylene virgin attended by roses.