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The Journals of Sylvia Plath

Book by Sylvia Plath · 50 quotes · Thinking, Want, Feels

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The Journals of Sylvia Plath Quotes

“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.”

ThinkingTwoMatterFactsValuesBeliefRealizingAbilityExistenceMillionsEnvironmentSeaBirthFindingsStandardsUltimateSatisfactionDefinedLive ByShallowHeredity
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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
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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
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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
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“The lyric abstrusities of Auden ring mystically down the circular canals of my ear and it begins to look like snow. The good gray conservative obliterating snow. Smoothing (in one white lacy euphemism after another) out all the black bleak angular unangelic nauseous ugliness of the blasted sterile world: dry buds, shrunken stone houses, dead vertical moving people all all all go under the great white beguiling wave. And come out transformed. Lose yourself in a numb dumb snow-daubed lattice of crystal and come out pure with the white virginal veneer you never had.”

PeopleWorldLooksMovingHouseBlackLosesWhitePureStonesEarsWaveConservativeRingsSnowWeatherDumbDryGrayTransformedUglinessCrystalsBudNumbBleakLosing YourselfCanalsVerticalEuphemismVeneerAuden
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