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Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath Quotes

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Famous Sylvia Plath Quotes

“The sickness rolled through me in great waves. After each wave it would fade away and leave me limp as a wet leaf and shivering all over and then I would feel it rising up in me again, and the glittering white torture chamber tiles under my feet and over my head and all four sides closed in and squeezed me to pieces.”

FeelsSidesWhitePiecesFourFeetWaveTortureRisingSicknessFadesWetLeafsLeaving MeChamberFade AwayRising UpTiles
Book:the bell jar
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“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.”

HeartStarsTearsWindBrokenMoonLateSummerGreenBitterTonightBroken HeartGossipYellowStemMy ThoughtsSourLemonsHeart BrokeVinegarPlumsTartsWryCaustic
Book:Collected Poems
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“A bad dream.To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.A bad dream.I remembered everything.I remembered the cadavers and Doreen and the story of the fig-tree and Marco's diamond and the sailor on the Common and Doctor Gordon's wall-eyed nurse and the broken thermometers and the negro with his two kinds of beans and the twenty pounds I gained on insulin and the rock that bulged between sky and sea like a grey skull.Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them.But they were part of me. They were my landscape”

WorldShouldKindPersonsTwoStoriesDreamCommonTreeSeaSkyRocksBrokenWallBabyDoctorsTwentiesSnowLandscapeRememberedPoundsNurseBellsDiamondBlankGreySailorSkullsBeansNumbForgetfulnessJarsMarcosFigsBad DreamBell JarThermometersCadaversInsulinDead Baby
Author:Sylvia Plath
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“On the train: staring hypnotized at the blackness outside the window, feeling the incomparable rhythmic language of the wheels, clacking out nursery rhymes, summing up moments of the mind like the chant of a broken record: god is dead, god is dead. going, going, going. and the pure bliss of this, the erotic rocking of the coach. France splits open like a ripe fig in the mind; we are raping the land, we are not stopping.”

MindMomentsFeelingsLanguageRecordsLandBrokenPureWindowTrainCoachesFranceStaringBlissWheelsNurseSplitsRhymeStoppingEroticRipeBlacknessNurseryIncomparableFigsGod Is DeadNursery RhymesSumming UpPure Bliss
Book:The Journals of Sylvia Plath
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“I have this demon who wants me to run away screaming if I am going to be flawed, fallible. It wants me to think I'm so good I must be perfect. Or nothing. I am, on the contrary, something: a being who gets tired, has shyness to fight, has more trouble than most facing people easily.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWantRunningFightingPerfectTroubleTiredContraryDemonRunning AwayWant MeFlawedShyness
Book:The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
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“I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus With tigery stripes, and a face on it Round as the moon, to stare up. I want to be looking at them when they come Picking among the dumb minerals, the roots. I see them already-the pale, star-distance faces. Now they are nothing, they are not even babies. I imagine them without fathers or mothers, like the first gods. They will wonder if I was important.”

IfsWantFirstsImportantFacesMotherPoetryFatherStarsWonderImagineBabyMoonRootsDistanceRoundsBoxesDumbStaringPaleMineralsStripes
Author:Sylvia Plath
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