Quotes from Sylvia Plath

Try to have a sense of 'I'; I = myself, as the center of my powers, as the creator of my world.

have deserted french

It's a dream. We will work toward it. It would also help getting a job in the states if I'd a novel published. Begin it this summer. Outline: intelligent woman, fight, triumph: toleration of conflict, etc. Make complex and rich and vivid. Use letters to Sassoon, etc. I'm getting excited. Make it tense & tough, and for god's sake, not sentimental.

Jilted My thoughts are crabbed and sallow, My tears like vinegar, Or the bitter blinking yellow Of an acetic star. Tonight the caustic wind, love, Gossips late and soon, And I wear the wry-faced pucker of The sour lemon moon. While like an early summer plum, Puny, green, and tart, Droops upon its wizened stem My lean, unripened heart.

Laughing Lazarus. And I forget the moments of radiance. I must get them down in print. Make them up in print. Be honest.

and bought oranges, apples, cheese, nuts and honey. Always feel happy shopping; gives me a sense of "things" somehow: taste color and touch, and a certain power and plentitude.

We grow. It hurts at first.

Noticed rooks squatting black in snowwhite fen, gray skies, black trees, mallard-green water.

I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain.

I shall be, in the future, omnipresent.

But in the midst of this terrible sorrow, this sickness, this weariness, this fear, I spin still: there is still the blessing of the natural world and those simply loved ones and all to read and see.

Is it possible to love the neutral, objective world and be scared of people? Dangerous for long, but possible. I love people I don't know. I smiled at a woman coming back over the fen path, and she said, with ironic understanding, "Wonderful weather." I loved her. I didn't read madness or superficiality in the image reflected in her eyes. For once.

What have I eaten? Lies and smiles .

Love is the bone and sinew of my curse. The vase, reconstructed, houses The elusive rose. Ten fingers shape a bowl for shadows. My mendings itch. There is nothing to do. I shall be good as new.

Enough to snuff the quick Of her small heat out, but before the weight Of stones and hills of stones could break Her down to mere quartz grit in that stony light She turned back.

Sim, fiquei e levada com você, ainda estou. Ninguém jamais despertou tamanha intensidade de sensação física em mim. Afastei-o, pois não suportaria ser um capricho passageiro. Antes de entregar meu corpo, preciso entregar meus pensamentos, minha mente, meus sonhos. E você não queria saber de nada disso.

It is the strangers that are easiest to love at this hard time. Because they do not demand and watch, always watch. I

Sun struck the water like a damnation. No pit of shadow to crawl into, And his blood beating the old tattoo I am, I am, I am.

Among petals pale as death And leaves steadfast in shape They sleep on, mouth to mouth. A white mist is going up. The small green nostrils breathe, And they turn in their sleep. Ousted from that warm bed We are a dream they dream. Their eyelids keep the shade. No harm can come to them. We cast our skins and slide Into another time.

New Yorker rejection of poems may smack me in the stomach any morning.

I read through the phone book once, never mind when, and it satisfied a deep need in me to realize how many people aren't called Smith. Anyhow

This second is life. And when it is gone, it is dead. But you can't start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead.

146 Stars Over the Dordogne Stars are dropping thick as stones into the twiggy Picket of trees whose silhouette is darker Than the dark of the sky because it is quite starless. The woods are a well. The stars drop silently. They seem large, yet they drop, and no gap is visible. Nor do they send up fires where they fall Or any signal of distress or anxiousness. They are eaten immediately by the pines.

Began another big one, more abstract, written from the bathtub: