Quotes from Sylvia Plath

I, to you, am lost in the gorgeous errors of flesh.

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.

I have a violence in me that is hot as death-blood.

The frost makes a flower, the dew makes a star --from Death & Co.

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again. (I think I made you up inside my head.) The stars go waltzing out in blue and red, And arbitrary blackness gallops in: I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead. I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.)

The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed.

What obsession do men have for destruction and murder? Who do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled 'enemy?

I am made, crudely, for success.

I hated to serve men in any way.

Although, I admit, I desire, Occasionally, some backtalk From the mute sky, I can't honestly complain: A certain minor light may still Lean incandescent Out of kitchen table or chair As if a celestial burning took Possession of the most obtuse objects now and then --

If I was going to fall, I would hang on to my small comforts, at least, for as long as I possibly could.

If you have no past or no future, which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide. But the cold reasoning mass of gray entrail in my cranium which parrots, 'I think, therefore I am,' whispers that there is always the turning, the upgrade, the new slant. And so I wait.

I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.

I sank back in the gray, plush seat and closed my eyes. The air of the bell jar wadded round me and I couldn't stir.

Doreen had intuition. Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones.

I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way.

I collected men with interesting names. I already knew a Socrates. He was tall and ugly and intellectual and the son of some big Greek movie producer in Hollywood, but also a Catholic, which ruined it for both of us.

To annihilate the world by annihilation of oneself is the deluded height of desperate egoism.

I love the people,' I said. 'I have room in me for love, and for ever so many little lives.

Over your body the clouds go High, high and icily And a little flat, as if they Floated on a glass that was invisible. Unlike swans, Having no reflections; Unlike you, With no strings attached. All cool, all blue. Unlike you You, there on your back, Eyes to the sky.

If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll e flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.

How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or seen anybody die?

The sky leans on me, me, the one upright among all horizontals.