Sylvia Quotes & Sayings

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

God, how I ricochet between certainties and doubts. — Sylvia Plath

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

No!" he barked. "You are the one who fails to comprehend. I am weary of chasing you, Caroline, but I won't stop. Not ever. I will hunt you down, I will run you to ground. There is no place where you can hide from me. — Sylvia Day

I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don't want to look around any more: I don't need to look around for anything. — Sylvia Plath

This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. — Sylvia Plath

Education, fundamentally, is the increase of the percentage of the conscious in relation to the unconscious. It must be a developing idea. — Sylvia Ashton-Warner

Death may whiten in sun or out of it. — Sylvia Plath

I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it. — 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

The best scientists and explorers have the attributes of kids! They ask question and have a sense of wonder. They have curiosity. 'Who, what, where, why, when, and how!' They never stop asking questions, and I never stop asking questions, just like a five year old. — Sylvia Earle

One in six people in the U.S. at some point each year don't know where their next meal will come from. — Sylvia Mathews Burwell

There is history to read- centuries to comprehend before I sleep, millions of lives to assimilate before breakfast tomorrow. — Sylvia Plath

What makes you push the shutter has to do with seeking a kind of perfection, a harmony in the world. You are instinctively aware it's there, but you've got to be completely alert and quick and so deeply awake that it moves you. — Sylvia Plachy

Wind warns November's done with. The blown leaves make bat-shapes, Web-winged and furious. — Sylvia Plath

There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice - patched, retreaded and approved for the road. — Sylvia Plath

Intuition can also mean an instant recognition of a truth, sensing that you are doing the right thing in making a choice or decision even if it is not the immediately obvious option or an experience of knowing the probable outcome just as it is beginning to unfold. — Sylvia Clare

Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls. — Sylvia Plath

Your actions toward others are your bank deposit. It's easy to be good to nice people, but try to be caring to everyone. It is a test. — Sylvia Browne

Winter dawn is the color of metal,
The trees stiffen into place like burnt nerves. — Sylvia Plath

Heir to your own karma doesn't mean 'You get what you deserve.' I think it means 'You get what you get.' Bad things happen to good people. My happiness depending on my action means, to me, that it depends on my action of choosing compassion
for myself as well as for everyone else
rather than contention. [p.61] — Sylvia Boorstein

I still have agents in France, Los Angeles and Amsterdam who call and suggest parts. I'd love to keep on doing both painting and acting until the end of my days. — Sylvia Kristel

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

One day at a time. You rise, you eat, you bathe, and you talk to the few people you can tolerate while feeling so wretched. Over time, it hurts a little less. Then a little less. And so on ... Until one morning, you will awake and realize the pain is only a memory. It will always be with you, but it will eventually lack the power to cripple you. — Sylvia Day

Concentration and mindfulness are the internal ways in which the mind restores itself from being out of balance and lost in confusion to a condition of ease, clarity, and wisdom. No external action needs to happen. — Sylvia Boorstein

You know what lies are for. — Sylvia Plath

No day is safe from news of you. — Sylvia Plath

When the mind is clear, behavior is always impeccable. — Sylvia Boorstein

... 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

I think Hemingway's [book] titles should be awarded first prize in any contest. Each of them is a poem, and their mysterious power over readers contributes to Hemingway's success. His titles have a life of their own, and they have enriched the American vocabulary. — Sylvia Beach

All losses are sad. The end of an important relationship is also a death. When people fall out of love with each other, or when what seemed like a solid friendship falls into ruin, the hope for a shared future
a hope that provided a context and a purpose to life
is gone. [p. 149] — Sylvia Boorstein

You're the reason I breathe, I can't turn it off." I slid my mouth across her cheek. "I think of nothing but you. All day. Every day. Everything I do, I do with you in mind. There's no room for anyone else. It kills me that you have room for him. — Sylvia Day

Yeah, I'm very smart. — Sylvia Browne

Connor: That was hot.
Stacey: Hmm?
Connor: Feeling you watching me. — Sylvia Day

I love music of all kinds, but there's no greater music than the sound of my grandchildren laughing; my kids, too. — Sylvia Earle

In the heart of the forest your image follows me — Sylvia Plath

I think I may well be a Jew. — Sylvia Plath

People still do not understand that a live fish is more valuable than a dead one, and that destructive fishing techniques are taking a wrecking ball to biodiversity. — Sylvia Earle

Surrender means wisely accommodating ourselves to what is beyond our control. — Sylvia Boorstein

I wondered what I thought I was burying. — Sylvia Plath

I've got to relearn what I was supposed to have learned. — Sylvia Ashton-Warner

People don't assume John Wayne shoots people and rides a horse on weekends. — Sylvia Kristel

I'm losing my mind without you. — Sylvia Day

I stepped on as many feet as I could because it took my mind off this enormous desire to puke that was ballooning up in front of me so fast I couldn't see round it. — Sylvia Plath

What the hell was I supposed to do, Eva? I didn't know you existed." Gideon's voice deepened, roughened. "If I'd known you were out there, I would've hunted you down. I wouldn't have waited a second to find you. But I didn't know, and I settled for less. So did you. We both wasted ourselves on the wrong people. — Sylvia Day

Day after day, ordinary people become heroes through extraordinary and selfless actions to help their neighbors. — Sylvia Mathews Burwell

You gonna deal with Mr. Hot and Moody?"
"Not sure. I may just pull out my e-reader."
He nodded. "Probably safer for your sanity. — Sylvia Day

Ever since I was small I loved feeling somebody comb my hair. It made me go all sleepy and peaceful. — Sylvia Plath

view from everyone on the main floor. My — Sylvia Day

I fret for Sylvia.
She appears anchored
to the idea of sinking,
which is silly when she so clearly
soars above almost everyone. — Stephanie Hemphill

I am sure there are things that can't be cured by a good bath but I can't think of one. — Sylvia Plath

The climate has been changing. Of course it [has]. Evidence throughout history, [which] we can assess, especially during human history, shows there have been ups and downs. But the last ten thousand years have been relatively stable compared to now. — Sylvia Earle

Everyone comes into a relationship with baggage. How do you make it work when the baggage you're bringing with you was given to you by the person you're hoping to have a relationship with? — Sylvia Day

One need not write in a diary what one is to remember for ever. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

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

It is awful to want to go away and to want to go nowhere. — Sylvia Plath

Women's evolution unfolded through stages in the last 100 years. The first stage was "Wonder Woman," an idealized figure who functioned like — Sylvia Becker-Hill

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

What ceremony of words can patch the havoc? — Sylvia Plath

Already she feels jaded. Weary, and gladly tired and old. — Sylvia Plath

The advantages of being a postman seemed more and more dubious. It is not a congenial profession for anyone who is at all sensitive, for people visit upon the postman all their first annoyance at receiving a couple of bills when they looked for a love-letter, and if a packet is insufficiently stamped they hand over the pennies as though to a despicable bandit, too outrageous to be denied, too groveling to be feared. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

B.O.B. and I have a longtime understanding - when we're done with each other, we know exactly which one of us has been used, and it isn't me. Good night Gideon. — Sylvia Day

Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks --

Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows. — 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

I had been alone more than I could have been had I gone by myself. — 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

Murmured, reminding me of the time I'd sung the Sara Bareilles anthem — Sylvia Day

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

The thing about nightmares was that you couldn't prepare for them. They sneaked up on you when you were most vulnerable. — Sylvia Day

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

Five balls! Five bright brass balls!
To juggle with, my love, when the sky falls. — Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Day delivers readers to a fantasy world as unique as it is erotic! Ms. Day is an up-and-coming talent in the world of erotic fiction. [on Pleasures of the Night ] — Toni Blake

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

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

This is a living planet. Look around. Mars, Venus, Jupiter. Look beyond our solar system. Where else is there a place that works, that is just right for the likes of us? It has not happened just instantly. It is vulnerable to our actions. But it's the result of four and a half billion years of evolution, of change over time. And it changes every day, all the time. It would be in our interest to try to maintain a certain level of stability that has enabled us to prosper, to not wreck the very systems that give us life. — Sylvia Earle

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 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

He reached for my hand, lifted it to his lips, and kissed my fingertips. I love you. — Sylvia Day

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

It is our own pain, and our own desire to be free of it, that alerts us to the suffering of the world. It is our personal discovery that pain can be acknowledged, even held lovingly, that enables us to look at the pain around us unflinchingly and feel compassion being born in us. We need to start with ourselves. — Sylvia Boorstein

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

This - he gestured impatiently at himself - is just a fucking shell. You're what drives me, Eva. Can you understand that? You're my heart and soul. If something ever happened to you, it would kill me, too. Keeping you safe is goddamned self-preservation! — Sylvia Day

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

Let me sit in a flowerpot, The spiders won't notice. My heart is a stopped geranium. — 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

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

Who knew that you would be The One," I smile, "which I guess makes me your Trinity."
"My Amidala."
"Your Zira."
"My Sylvia."
"Your ... " I scour my brain, trying to remember some other great sci-fi love interest.
"Ha! I'm your Saphira," I settle back smugly, only for Trevor to start laughing.
"Saphira is a dragon. — Cindy C. Bennett

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

It has taken these many hundreds of millions of years to fine-tune the Earth to a point where it is suitable for the likes of us. — Sylvia Earle

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

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

You've got five minutes to get your ass up and in the shower, or the shower's coming to you. — Sylvia Day

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

I don't believe I will ever understand men. The more I learn about them, the less they make sense — Sylvia Day

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

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