They had to call and callAnd pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.--From the poem "Lady Lazarus", written 23-29 October 1962

Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it

Dying is an art.Like everything else, I do it exceptionally well.I do it so it feels like hell.I do it so it feels real.I guess you could say I have a call.

Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions?Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?

The blood jet is poetryThere is no stopping it.

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

Stasis in darkness.Then the substanceless blue

The still watersWrap my lips, Eyes, nose and ears, A clearCellophane I cannot crack.

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

Its snaky acids kiss.It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill.

The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.

Believe in yourself! Have faith in your abilities! Without a humble but reasonable confidence in your own powers you cannot be successful or happy.

Poirot," I said. "I have been thinking." "An admirable exercise my friend. Continue it.

I think that it's important to have good people around you, like my friends.

I am a woman and when I think, I must speak.

I think I've had my fill of electoral law.

Nothing is irredeemably ugly but sin.

During the late nights, try to walk in the empty streets with an empty mind! Light of wisdom will soon accompany you!

Everything, in retrospect, is obvious. But if everything were obvious, authors of histories of financial folly would be rich . . .

What we teach our children is that earth is your mother that provides; she's a giver. So, please first ask forgiveness from the mother earth before you step on to it and cause it pain.

It is your choices that make you uniquely you.