Best Sylvia Plath Quotes & Sayings
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Top Best Sylvia Plath Quotes
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 — Sylvia Plath
I tried to think what I had loved knives for, but my mind slipped from the noose of the thought and swung, like a bird, in the centre of empty air. — Sylvia Plath
You know what lies are for. — Sylvia Plath
There is history to read- centuries to comprehend before I sleep, millions of lives to assimilate before breakfast tomorrow. — Sylvia Plath
No day is safe from news of you. — Sylvia Plath
... I hate myself for not being able to go downstairs naturally and seek comfort in numbers. I hate myself for having to sit here and be torn between I know not what within me. — Sylvia Plath
I self-paralyze myself & wonder what I've got in my head. — Sylvia Plath
I stepped from the air-conditioned compartment onto the station platform, and the motherly breath of the suburbs enfolded me. It smelt of lawn sprinklers and station wagons and tennis rackets and dogs and babies. — Sylvia Plath
This was the best time of the day, when I could lie in the vague twilight, drifting off to sleep, making up dreams inside my head the way they should go. — Sylvia Plath
I feel stuffy, as if there were not enough air to breathe - hot, and uneasy. Two months of no exercise have made me weak and plegmatic mentally and physically. On the short walk from here to the libe I drink the cold pure night air and the clear unbelievably delicate crescent-moonlight with a greedy reverence. Days are bizarre collections of hothouse languidities, mystical and poignant sensuous quotations (white thy fambles, red thy gan, and thy quarrons dainty is ... " Dark, liquid loveliness of words half dimly understood.) — Sylvia Plath
I can't think logically about who I am or where I am going. I have been very ecstatic, horribly depressed, shocked, elated, enlightened, and enervated. — Sylvia Plath
In the infinitesimal glow of the stars,
the trees and flowers were strewing
their cool odos. There was no moon. — Sylvia Plath
So this was the reverse of dazzling Nauset.
The flip of the coin - the flip of an ocean fallen
Dream-face down. And here, at my feet, in the suds,
The other face, the real, staring upwards. — Ted Hughes
And, I think: I am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence. Of the millions, I, too, was potentially everything at birth. I, too, was stunted, narrowed, warped, by my environment, my outcroppings of heredity. I, too, will find a set of beliefs, of standards to live by, yet the very satisfaction of finding them will be marred by the fact that I have reached the ultimate in shallow, two-dimensional living - a set of values. — Sylvia Plath
Winter dawn is the color of metal,
The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves. — Sylvia Plath
When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn't know.
"Oh, sure you know," the photographer said.
"She wants," said Jay Cee wittily, "to be everything. — Sylvia Plath
Almost, I think, the unreasoning, bestial purity was best. — Sylvia Plath
Poetry at its best can do you a lot of harm. — Sylvia Plath
Joan was the beaming double of my old best self, specially designed to follow
and torment me. — Sylvia Plath
It is best to meet in a cul-de-sac, A palace of velvet With windows of mirrors. There one is safe, There are no family photographs, No rings through the nose, no cries. — Sylvia Plath
This woman lawyer said the best men wanted to be pure for their wives, and even if they weren't pure, they wanted to be the ones to teach their wives about sex. Of course they would try to persuade a girl to have sex and say they would marry her later, but as
soon as she gave in, they would lose all respect for her and start saying that if she did that with them she would do that with other men and they would end up by making her life
miserable. — Sylvia Plath
It's the living, the eating, the sleeping that everyone needs. Ideas don't matter so much after all. My three best friends are Catholic. I can't see their beliefs, but I can see the things they love to do on earth. When you come right down to it, I do believe in the freedom of the individual ... — Sylvia Plath
August rain: the best of the summer gone, and the new fall not yet born. The odd uneven time. — Sylvia Plath
Why can't I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is more becoming? — Sylvia Plath
And times there are when you feel very wise and ageless. You are sunning on the rocks, the water splashing at your feet, when a small chubby freckle faced girl of about ten approaches you, her hand holding something that is invisible, but evidently quite precious. 'Do you know,' she asks earnestly, 'do starfish like hot or cold water best? — Sylvia Plath
For the next nine months, Sylvia would report on campus trends, politics, tastes, style. It was an honor, but it was grueling. Sylvia was overworked. She had boyfriend problems. She longed for Europe. She broke her leg in a skiing accident. Her best friend, Marcia Brown, had gotten engaged and moved off campus - other girls were away on their junior year abroad. The whole campus seemed mired in some bleak haze- there were suicide attempts, abortions, disappearances, and hasty marriages. Sylvia coped with shopping binges in downtown Northhampton- sheer blouses, French pumps, red cashmere sweaters, white skirts, and tight black pullovers - clothes more suited to voguish amusements than studying. Everyone wanted to be one of Mademoiselle's guest editors, but Sylvia needed it - some shot of glamour to pull her out of the mud. — Elizabeth Winder
It is awful to want to go away and to want to go nowhere. — Sylvia Plath
Outcast on a cold star, unable to feel anything but an awful helpless numbness. I look down into the warm, earthy world. Into a nest of lovers' beds, baby cribs, meal tables, all the solid commerce of life in this earth, and feel apart, enclosed in a wall of glass. — Sylvia Plath
And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secretly wanted when the wedding service ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat ... I also remembered Buddy Willard saying in a sinister, knowing way that after I had children I would feel differently, I wouldn't want to write poems any more. So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about numb as a slave in some private, totalitarian state. — Sylvia Plath
Five balls! Five bright brass balls!
To juggle with, my love, when the sky falls. — Sylvia Plath
God, I scream for time to let go, to write, to think. But no. I have to exercise my memory in little feats just so I can stay in this damn wonderful place which I love and hate with all my heart. And so the snow slows and swirls, and melts along the edges. The first snow isn't good for much. It makes a few people write poetry, a few wonder if the Christmas shopping is done, a few make reservations at the skiing lodge. It's a sentimental prelude to the real thing. It's picturesque & quaint. — Sylvia Plath
The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed. — Sylvia Plath
Remember how you asked me where would I like to live best, the country or the city?"
"And you said ... "
"And I said I wanted to live in the country and in the city both? — Sylvia Plath
I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.
Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?
I am incapable of more knowledge.
What is this, this face
So murderous in its strangle of branches? -
Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.
From the poem "Elm", 19 April 1962 — Sylvia Plath
Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks --
Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows. — Sylvia Plath
Already she feels jaded. Weary, and gladly tired and old. — Sylvia Plath
What ceremony of words can patch the havoc? — Sylvia Plath
I want to force myself again and again to leave the warmth and security of static situations and move into the world of growth and suffering where the real books are people's minds and souls. — Sylvia Plath
I am afraid of getting older. I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day - spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote. I want to be free. ( ... ) I want, I think, to be omniscient ... I think I would like to call myself "The girl who wanted to be God." Yet if I were not in this body, where would I be - perhaps I am destined to be classified and qualified. But, oh, I cry out against it. I am I - I am powerful - but to what extent? I am I. — Sylvia Plath
The sky leans on me, me, the one upright among all horizontals. — Sylvia Plath
I had been alone more than I could have been had I gone by myself. — Sylvia Plath
And we, too, had a relationship
Tight wires between us,
Pegs too deep to uproot, and a mind like a ring
Sliding shut on some quick thing,
The constriction killing me also. — Sylvia Plath
On Fridays the little children come To trade their hooks for hands. Dead men leave eyes for others. Love is the uniform of my bald nurse. 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. — Sylvia Plath
All my life I'd told myself studying and reading and writing and working like mad was what I wanted to do, and it actually seemed to be true, I did everything well enough and got all A's, and by the time I made it to college nobody could stop me. — Sylvia Plath
We know a thing by its opposite corollary; hot by having experienced cold; good by having decided what is bad; love by hate. — Sylvia Plath
I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn't groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again. — Sylvia Plath
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. — Sylvia Plath
Always him. Damn, what is the matter with me? Is it because I want somebody to orient myself about that I'm drawn to him, or am I drawn to him because he is exactly the sort of person I want to orient myself about? — Sylvia Plath
I believe that there are people who think as I do, who have thought as I do, who will think as I do. There are those who will live, unconscious of me, but continuing my attitude, so to speak, as I continue, unknowingly, the similar attitude of those before me. I could write and write. All it takes is a motion of the hand in response to a brain impulse, trained from childhood to record in our own American brand of hieroglyphics the translations of external stimuli. How much of my brain is wilfully my own? How much is not a rubber stamp of what I have read and heard and lived? Sure, I make a sort of synthesis of what I come across, but that is all that differentiates me from another person? - - - That I have banged into and assimilated various things? That my environment and a chance combination of genes got me where I am? — Sylvia Plath
Let me sit in a flowerpot, The spiders won't notice. My heart is a stopped geranium. — Sylvia Plath