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Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath Quotes

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Famous Sylvia Plath Quotes

“Don't talk to me about the world needing cheerful stuff! What the person out of Belsen physical or psychological wants is nobody saying the birdies still go tweet-tweet, but the full knowledge that somebody else has been there and knows the worst, just what it is like.”

KnowsWorldWantPersonsHas BeensStillsStuffWorstPsychologicalCheerfulTweetTalk To MeDon't Talk To Me
Book:Letters home: correspondence, 1950-1963
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“Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars - to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording - all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.”

MenWantI CanFactsAbleLife IsDesireNightGirlInterestSleepWalksDangerFieldsListeningSceneFemaleWestSoldierIntimacyCrewAssaultInvitationsConsumingSailorSpoiledSeducingBatteriesOpen FieldsMisconstrued
Author:Sylvia Plath
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“I didn't know shorthand either. This meant I couldn't get a good job after college. My mother kept telling me nobody wanted a plain English major. But an English major who knew shorthand would be something else again. Everybody would want her. She would be in demand among all the up-and-coming young men and she would transcribe letter after thrilling letter. The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters.”

KnowsMenWayWantIdeasWould BeWantedJobsYoungMotherMy OwnTroubleCollegeDemandMajorsLettersHatedYoung ManServingGood JobThrillingShorthandEnglish MajorPlain English
Author:Sylvia Plath
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“This is newness: every little tawdry Obstacle glass-wrapped and peculiar, Glinting and clinking in a saint's falsetto. Only you Don't know what to make of the sudden slippiness, The blind, white, awful, inaccessible slant. There's no getting up it by the words you know. No getting up by elephant or wheel or shoe. We have only come to look. You are too new To want the world in a glass hat.”

KnowsWorldWantLooksLittlesWhiteBlindShoesSaintGlassesObstaclesAwfulWheelsHatsPeculiarElephantsNewnessInaccessibleFalsetto
Book:Collected Poems
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“Let's face it: I'm scared, scared and frozen. First, I guess, I'm afraid for myself ... the old primitive urge for survival. It's getting so I live every moment with terrible intensity. Last night, driving back from Boston, I lay back in the car and let the colored lights come at me, the music from the radio, the reflection of the guy driving. It all flowed over me with a screaming ache of pain ... remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I've taken for granted. When you feel that this may be the good-bye, the last time, it hits you harder.”

WantFeelsFirstsMayMomentsPainLastsRememberFacesTakenAwarenessTerribleSurvivalHarderScaredBe GoodGrantedUrgesIntensityPrimitiveLast TimeFrozenAcheByeGood ByeTaken For GrantedLive Every Moment
Author:Sylvia Plath
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“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
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“I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and criticizing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love.”

ThinkingWayWantPainEasyUnderstandingTasteGloryInsightCoreEach DayCriticizeQuestioningNumbEasy WayLive And Learn
Book:The Journals of Sylvia Plath
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“I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty. How free it is, you have no idea how free—— The peacefulness is so big it dazes you, And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets. It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.”

WantIdeasHandsBigsWantedLyingAsksNamesImagineFlowerMouthsEmptyNo IdeaCommunionTagPeacefulnessTabletsTrinketsDaze
Author:Sylvia Plath
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“* to know a lot of people I love pieces of, and to want to synthesize those pieces in me somehow, be it by painting or writing. * to know that millions of others are unhappy and that life is a gentleman's agreement to grin and paint your face gay so others will feel they are silly to be unhappy, and try to catch the contagion of joy, while inside so many are dying of bitterness and unfulfillment.”

PeopleKnowsWantFeelsWritingTryingFacesLife IsJoyMillionsPiecesDyingPaintingGayPaintSillyUnhappyGentlemanAgreementYour FaceBitternessContagionUnfulfillment
Author:Sylvia Plath
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“So much working, reading, thinking, living to do. A lifetime is not long enough. Nor youth to old age long enough. Immortality and permanence be damned. Sure I want them, but they are nonexistent, and won't matter when I rot underground. All I want to say is: I made the best of a mediocre job. It was a good fight while it lasted. And so life goes.”

ThinkingWantLongMadeMatterEnoughAgeJobsFightingReadingYouthLifetimeOld AgeImmortalityMediocrePermanenceGood Fight
Book:The Unabridged Journals of 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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“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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“Nothing is real except the present, and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moment, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don’t want to die.”

KnowsWantFeelsYearsRealMomentsDiesGirlGoneCenturyHundredYears AgoWeightBurningFlashWanting To DieQuicksand
Book:The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
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