Quotessence
Home / Authors / Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath Quotes

Poet

Filter quotes by topic

AllBell JarIfsThinkingWritingFeelsPeopleWantKnowsWorldFeminismMenBeing A WomanClassicWayI CanSylvia PlathDepressionHeartFeltMade

Famous Sylvia Plath Quotes

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

IfsWayLifeWritingSelfLife IsImaginationEnemyCreativityDoubtWrittenSadnessFeminismWorstSadClassicGutsWriting AdviceBeing A WomanGood WritersWriters And WritingWorst EnemySelf-doubtWriting By WritersGreat WritingImprovisingOutgoingCreative LifeStory WritingWriting StoriesInspire CreativityCreativity And WritingArtists And CreativityReal TalkFamous WritersStory WritersWriting From Famous AuthorsWriting ShortShort Writing
Book:The Journals of Sylvia Plath
Create image

“At this rate, I'd be lucky if I wrote a page a day. Then I knew what the problem was. I needed experience. How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or even seen anybody die? A girl I knew had just won a prize for a short story about her adventures among the pygmies in Africa. How could I compete with that sort of thing?”

IfsWritingStoriesProblemDiesGirlAdventureBabyNeededLuckyPagesRateAffairPrizeShort StoryLove Affair
Book:the bell jar
Create image

“I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.”

IfsKnowsWantFeelsEyeWaterTakenWeekCryTearsDepressionGlassesSpokesThroatBell JarPicture Taken
Book:the bell jar
Create image

“I’d discovered, after a lot of extreme apprehension about what spoons to use, that if you do something incorrect at table with a certain arrogance, as if you knew perfectly well you were doing it properly, you can get away with it and nobody will think you are bad-mannered or poorly brought up. They will think you are original and very witty.”

IfsThinkingWellsUseCertainFoodOriginalsTablesCookingWittyExtremesArroganceGet AwayCulinarySpoonsApprehensionVery Witty
Book:the bell jar
Create image

“I thought if only I had a keen, shapely bone structure to my face or could discuss politics shrewdly or was a famous writer Constantin might find me interesting enough to sleep with. And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink into ordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys before him.”

IfsWayEnoughMightFacesSleepInterestingBoysStructureFaultsBonesLike MeFind MeBuddyOrdinarinessFamous Writers
Book:the bell jar
Create image

“…'It always has to end, doesn't it? We always have to separate.' 'Yes,' I said. He was insistent, 'But it doesn't always have to be that way. We could be together some day for always.' 'Oh, no,' I told him, wondering if he knew it was all over. 'We keep running till we die. We separate, get further apart, till we are dead.”

IfsWaySaidEndsRunningTogetherDiesWonderKeep Running
Book:The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Create image

“I can't deceive myself out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide.”

IfsWellsMayMadeI CanRealMatterCharacterLightPastRoomsFateEmptySuicideCommitRealizationClockElectricDeceivingShellsCheerfulEnthusiasticBrillianceStarksYour RoomElectric LightClock TickingEmpty Shell
Author:Sylvia Plath
Create image

“…* to learn that money makes life smooth in some ways, and to feel how tight and threadbare life is if you have too little. * to despise money, which is a farce, mere paper, and to hate what you have to do for it, and yet to long to have it in order to be free from slaving for it. * to yearn toward art, music, ballet and good books, and get them only in tantalizing snatches.”

IfsWayFeelsLittlesLongArtBookLife IsHateOrderPaperMereBalletDespiseSmoothGood BookFarceArt MusicTantalizing
Author:Sylvia Plath
Create image

“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
Create image

“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
Create image