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Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath Quotes

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Famous Sylvia Plath Quotes

“God, if ever I have come close to wanting to commit suicide, it is now, with the groggy sleepless blood dragging through my veins, and the air thick and gray with rain ... I fell into bed again this morning, begging for sleep, withdrawing into the dark, warm, fetid escape from action, from responsibility. No good.”

IfsActionDarkSleepResponsibilityMorningAirBloodBedRainSuicideWarmCommitGrayThickVeinsSuicidalBeggingWithdrawing
Book:The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
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“The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. 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've a call.”

FeelsFirstsWellsArtRealLastsHellHappenedDyingTenPicksFirst TimeAccidentsPearlsWormsSuicidalSticky
Author:Sylvia Plath
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“Last year a friend went dark in a nervous city alone, the sea flashing against his glasses, the sea sorted out at last in his inner ear so he could leave this world as he'd entered it through the undependable irrational influence of water. -Kevin Jeffery Clark It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.”

IfsWorldYearsWholeWantedLastsWaterDarkSecretCitiesSeaInfluenceThis WorldSkinsEarsHarderBlueGlassesDeeperNervousLast YearIrrationalSuicidalSomewhere ElsePulseThumbsKevin
Author:Sylvia Plath
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“One night she hid the pink cotton scarf from her raincoat in the pillowcase when the nurse came around to lock up her drawers and closets for the night. In the dark she had made a loop and tried to pull it tight around her throat. But always just as the air stopped coming and she felt the rushing grow louder in her ears, her hands would slacken and let go, and she would lie there panting for breath, cursing the dumb instinct in her body that fought to go on living”

MadeBodyHandsLyingNightGrowsFeltDarkAirGoes OnLetting GoEarsBreathsSuicideInstinctDumbThroatNurseLocksClosetsOne NightRushingCottonDrawersLoopsSelf HarmCursingScarvesLock UpPillowcases
Author:Sylvia Plath
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“You have lost all delight in life. Ahead is a large array of blind alleys. You are half-deliberately, half-desperately cutting off your grip on creative life. You are becoming a neuter machine. You cannot love, even if you knew how to begin to love. Every thought is a devil, a hell-if you could do a lot of things over again, ah, how differently you would do them! You want to go home, back to the womb. You watch the world bang door after door in your face, numbly, bitterly. You have forgotten the secret you knew, once, ah, once, of being joyous, of laughing, of opening doors.”

IfsWorldWantHomeFacesLostSecretHalfWatchesLaughingHellCreativeCuttingDoorsBecomingDepressionDevilMachinesBlindForgottenIllnessDelightMental IllnessOpeningYour FaceWombBangsJoyousAlleysCreative LifeCutting OffOpening Doors
Book:The Journals of Sylvia Plath
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“Look at that ugly dead mask here and do not forget it. It is a chalk mask with dead dry poison behind it, like the death angel. It is what I was this fall, and what I never want to be again. The pouting disconsolate mouth, the flat, bored, numb, expressionless eyes: symptoms of the foul decay within.”

WantLooksEyeFallForgetBehindsDepressionMouthsAngelIllnessUglyMental IllnessBoredPoisonDryEmptinessMaskFlatsDecaySymptomsForget ItDetachmentFoulNumbNumbnessChalkAngel Of DeathPouting
Book:The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
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“... you looked around and saw everybody either married or busy and happy and thinking and being creative, and you felt scared, sick, lethargic, worst of all, not wanting to cope. You saw visions of yourself in a straightjacket, and a drain on the family, murdering your mother in actuality, killing the edifice of love and respect built up over the years in the hearts of other people.”

PeopleThinkingYearsHeartMotherFeltVisionCreativeSawsWorstDepressionMarriedBuiltSickKillingBusyScaredIllnessMental IllnessBe CreativeDrainsLove And RespectActualityEdificeLethargic
Book:The Journals of Sylvia Plath
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“This seemed a dreary and wasted life for a girl with fifteen years of straight A's, but I knew that's what marriage was like, because cook and clean and wash was just what Buddy Willard's mother did from morning till night, and she was the wife of a university professor and had been a private school teacher herself.”

YearsSchoolMotherNightGirlMarriageMorningTeacherWifeCleanUniversityCooksProfessorsFifteenBuddyDrearyFifteen YearsSchool TeachersWasted LifePrivate SchoolUniversity Professors
Book:the bell jar
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“I shall never get out of this! There are two of me now: This new absolutely white person and the old yellow one, And the white person is certainly the superior one. She doesn't need food, she is one of the real saints. At the beginning I hated her, she had no personality- She lay in bed with me like a dead body And I was scared, because she was shaped just the way I was only much whiter and unbreakable and with no complaints. I couldn't sleep for a week she was so cold.”

WayNeedsPersonsTwoRealBodySleepWhiteWeekColdPersonalityBedLaysSaintScaredSuperiorsHatedConformityYellowComplaintsNon ConformityUnbreakableTwo Of Me
Book:Collected Poems
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“Why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and-cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life?”

WorldInspirationalMotherIndividualGrowsResponsibilityHellFeminismBrokenClassicWheelsDullCreamSmoothBeing A WomanGeeseFablesWonderlandStrawberriesResponsibilities In LifeMother Goose
Book:The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
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