Best Plath Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“I am sitting in my room, looking out at a scene of snow pouring down with ice and sleet and thinking of how sometimes people are really wonderful after all.”

Letters Plath Letters Of Sylvia Plath

Book:Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume I: 1940-1956

Source: Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume I: 1940-1956

“Rooms.Every room a world. To be god: to be every life before we die: a dream to drive men mad. But to be one person, one woman- to live, suffer, bear children and learn others lives and make them into print worlds spinning like planets in the minds of other men.”

Men Plath

Author:Sylvia Plath

“Kafka, Tolstoy, Plath, Hemingway, Neruda, and Rilke are all masters of writing. They are history. Read the writings of the present generation poets & writers, before they become history!”

Writers Poets Writing Philosophy Writing Inspiration Kafka Tolstoy Hemingway Plath Rilke Neruda

Author:Avijeet Das

“I’m so pathetically intense. I just can’t be any other way.”

Poetry Sylvia Plath Plath

Book:The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2: 1956-1963 – A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet's Intimate Correspondence on Marriage and Mental Health

Source: The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2: 1956-1963 – A Pulitzer Prize-Winning Poet's Intimate Correspondence on Marriage and Mental Health

“Maybe if I could slip into Sylvia's mind, sort out the spices in her rack, alphabetize them and dust them off. Maybe then I'd understand how it's the little things that pull you under.”

Poetry Plath

Author:Kelli Russell Agodon

“This mizzle fits me like a sad jacket.”

Sad Depression Sylvia Plath Plath

Author:Sylvia Plath

“I knew what was about to happen. I knew I was going to cry. It’s not even about sadness—it’s about vulnerability. Seeing into a person’s soul, even for a moment, is just too much. It’s like the convex meniscus Sylvia Plath describes in The Bell Jar—the water that clings to the sides of the glass before one tiny pulse causes it to overflow.”

Self Discovery Bell Jar Plath

Book:Burning Sage

Source: Burning Sage

“The eyes and the faces all turned themselves towards me, and guiding myself by them, as by a magical thread, I stepped into the room.”

Beautiful Journey Depression Suicide Unsure Asylum Plath Bell Jar Sylvia

Author:Sylvia Plath

“an atmosphere of pain blood and pain and misery or staunch bitter rebellion of body- but no peace- no transfiguration- atmosphere of fear of physical pain - wincing from the knife- the loss of identity which is slavery to physical pain. Brutal, passionate flesh- marisse crucifix- pain smoothed way, identity smoothed away in pain- pure anguish human attempts at deciphering the riddle of pain- blood: florid and ornate-ugly, unredeeemed, ironic- waiting in corridors- cross of flesh x spirit- minor daily crosses-”

Blood Imagery Plath

Book:The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Dialogues with such inspiring idols as Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, E E Cummings, Rabindranath Tagore, Lakshmi Prasad Devkota, Ernest Hemingway in one's imagination is a way to keep the creative fire burning within the artist's soul.”

Idols Inspirations Writing Inspiration Hemingway Plath Maya Angelou Rabindranath Tagore Dialogues Cummings Lakshmi Prasad Devkota

Author:Avijeet Das

“They're really going to mash the world up this time, the damn fools. When I read that description of the victims of Nagasaki I was sick: "And we saw what first looked like lizards crawling up the hill, croaking. It got lighter and we could see that it was humans, their skin burned off, and their bodies broken where they had been thrown against something." Sounds like something out of a horror story. God save us from doing that again. For the United States did that. Our guilt. My country. No, never again.”

War Russia Plath Ww3

Author:Sylvia Plath

“Look, if you ask a child, 'Would you rather have a fulfilled mother or a stay-at-home Sylvia Plath,' they'll pick Sylvia Plath every time. But I think it's really important that children don't feel their parents' emotional lives depend on their success.”

Ifs Thinking Feels Looks Children Important Home Mother Asks Parent Emotional Depends Picks Fulfilled Stay At Home Emotional Life Plath

Author:Ayelet Waldman

“It's rather splendid to think of all those great men and women who appear to have presented symptoms that allow us to describe them as bipolar. Whether it's Hemingway, Van Gogh... Robert Schumann has been mentioned... Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath... some of them with rather grim ends.”

Thinking Men Has Beens Ends Men And Women Great Men Symptoms Vans Splendid Virginia Grim Bipolar Woolf Plath Schumann

Author:Stephen Fry

“With ferocity and extraordinary craft, Lizzie Harris has made a book of poems that resonates far beyond the personal stories it tells. Stop Wanting reveals, in every lyric, its author's profound metaphorical gifts. In its ironies and intensities, it brings to mind a writer like the young Sylvia Plath, though what is startling about Harris' s work is the way it combines those gifts with a muted, deft self-awareness. Most of all, these are wonderfully shaped, powerful, and surprising poems-a startling debut.”

Way Mind Made Book Self Stories Young Powerful Awareness Self Awareness Profound Extraordinary Crafts Irony Intensity Surprising Debut Metaphorical Ferocity Personal Stories Plath

Author:Meghan O'Rourke

“Sylvia Plath. Interesting poetess whose tragic suicide was misinterpreted as romantic by the college-girl mentality.”

Girl Interesting College Suicide Tragic Mentality Misinterpreted Annie Hall Plath College Girl

Book:Annie Hall: scénario bilingue

Source: Annie Hall: scénario bilingue

“Like all twenty-one-year-old poets, I thought I would be dead by thirty, and Sylvia Plath had not set a helpful example. For a while there, you were made to feel that, if a poet and female, you could not really be serious about it unless you'd made at least one suicide attempt. So I felt I was running out of time.”

Ifs Feels Years Made Would Be Running Felt Example Serious Poet Female Twenties Suicide Thirty Helpful Twenty One Running Out Of Time Plath

Author:Margaret Atwood

“Come on, man.... Hemingway, Sexton, Plath, Woolf. You can't kill yourself before you're even published.”

Men Killing Yourself Woolf Plath

Author:Paul Giamatti

“I don't mean that creative people are somehow finer, or more sensitive, and thus have finer, more sensitive nervous breakdowns - you can save that horseshit for the Sylvia Plath worshipers. It's just that creative people have creative breakdowns.”

People Mean Creative Nervous Sensitive Creative People Breakdown Nervous Breakdown Plath

Book:The Tommyknockers

Source: The Tommyknockers

“I loved 1930's women's pictures'films by Josef Von Sternberg or William Wyler. So, I fashioned a style out of that. The integrity and ethos of what I would write, however, came from the films of Ousmane Sembene and from reading Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, Sylvia Plath and Alice Walker.”

Writing Film Reading Style Integrity 1930s Walkers Ethos Plath

Author:Kola Boof

“If you're going to get up to Walt Whitman and Robert Frost and Langston Hughes and Sylvia Plath you've got to figure out how you put people in possession of their heritage. To do that you have to talk about how they're being taught, and the imagination of community the people who are running our government have.”

People Ifs Government Running Community Imagination Figures Taught Possession Get Up Heritage Frost Walt Plath

Author:Robert Hass

“I remember coming upon Philip Larkin in my 20s in the early '60s and when Sylvia Plath's "Ariel" came out it knocked me off my feet.”

Remember Feet Philip Ariel Plath

Author:Stephen Dobyns

“You marvel at the economy and this choice of words. How many ways can you describe the sky and the moon? After Sylvia Plath, what can you say?”

Way Choices Economy Sky Moon Plath

Author:Toni Morrison

“[Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop it. She said self-government she said end of the road. She did not say humming in the middle of the air what you came for chop.”

Said Ends Self Government Mother Hurt Air Middle Television Hatred Excellent Burned It Hurts Jungle Weeping Hurt Me Self-government Humming End Of The Road Plath

Author:Anne Carson

“But you have to understand, mental illness is like cholesterol. There is is good kind and the bad. Without the good kind- less flavor to life. Van Gogh, Beethoven, Edgar Allen Poe, Sylvia Plath, Pink Floyd (the early Piper at the Gates of Dawn line up), scientific breakthroughs, spiritual revolution, utopian visions, zany nationalism that kills millions- wait, that’s the bad kind. Tim Dorsey (Hurricane Punch)”

Kind Spiritual Waiting Lines Vision Millions Revolution Illness Mental Illness Dawn Nationalism Gates Flavor Vans Breakthrough Hurricanes Utopian Pipers Cholesterol Plath Edgar Allen

Author:Tim Dorsey

“For throughout history, you can read the stories of women who - against all the odds - got being a woman right, but ended up being compromised, unhappy, hobbled or ruined, because all around them, society was still wrong. Show a girl a pioneering hero - Sylvia Plath, Dorothy Parker, Frida Kahlo, Cleopatra, Boudicca, Joan of Arc - and you also, more often than not, show a girl a woman who was eventually crushed.”

Stills Stories Shows Girl Feminism Proud Hero Feminist Unhappy Odds Ruined Crushed Being A Woman Arcs Pioneering Women Right Plath Frida

Book:How to Be a Woman

Source: How to Be a Woman

“Our suicidal poets (Plath, Berryman, Lowell, Jarrell, et al.) spent too much of their lives inside rooms and classrooms when they should have been trudging up mountains, slogging through swamps, rowing down rivers. The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial.”

Source: A Voice Crying in the Wilderness

“People who think that Sylvia Plath was a poor, sensitive poet are not getting that she had great amounts of ambition and anger that moved her along, or she wouldn't have been able to fight against that depression to produce such an incredible body of work by the age of thirty.”

People Thinking Has Beens Body Age Able Fighting Poor Produce Poet Amount Depression Ambition Moved Incredibles Sensitive Thirty Plath

Author:Elizabeth Wurtzel

“Beachy Head brims with electrical currents flying backwards and forwards, with the force of poems that have been well fought out and felt. I hear the currents of Alice Notley, of Bernadette Mayer, of Eileen Myles, and Sylvia Plath”

Wells Has Beens Force Felt Currents Flying Backwards Electrical Mayer Plath

Author:Dorothea Lasky

“Like Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is both the beauty and unique nature of her storytelling. With brilliance and courage, the author's brave and candid chronicle travels where no other memoir about mental illness and addiction has gone before. The Third Sunrise is an incredible triumph and Natalie Jeanne Champagne is without a doubt the most important new voice in this genre.”

“Sylvia Plath was just a month and a half older than I, and when she committed suicide I was only 30 - and very shocked and sorry. I never knew her personally.”

Half Months Suicide Sorry Committed Shocked Plath

Author:Anne Stevenson

“I love Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I also love more cerebral poets like H.D. and Emily Dickinson. My parents subscribed to a monthly poetry periodical, and as a teenager I was introduced to Denise Levertov, who was an influence.”

Parent Influence Poet Teenager Emily Cerebral Plath

Author:Francesca Lia Block

“Augustine, Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath are confessional writers and all three make me sick. I have nothing in common with them.”

Three Common Sick Augustine Plath

Author:Joni Mitchell