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Sylvia Plath Quotes

Browse 58 quotes about Sylvia Plath.

Sylvia Plath Quotes

“She told him that she had kicked her husband out because he was seeing another woman. When the vicar suggested this might be the result of her not being a good enough wife, Plath's response was to pick up a broom and chase him down the drive of Court Green”

WomenFunny And RandomSylvia Plath
Book:Three-Martini Afternoons at the Ritz: The Rebellion of Sylvia Plath & Anne Sexton
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“I will not let myself get sick, go mad or retreat like a child into blubbering on someone else's shoulder. Masks are the order of the day-and the least I can do is cultivate the illusion that I am gay, serene, not hollow and afraid. Someday, god knows when, I will stop this absurd, self-pitying, idle, futile despair.”

DespairDepressionPityHollowAfraidSylvia Plath
Book:Red Comet: The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath
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“My Mother They are killing her again. She said she did it One year in every ten, But they do it annually, or weekly, Some even do it daily, Carrying her death around in their heads And practicing it. She saves them The trouble of their own; They can die through her Without ever making The decision. My buried mother Is up-dug for repeat performances. Now they want to make a film For anyone lacking the ability To imagine the body, head in oven, Orphaning children. Then It can be rewound So they can watch her die Right from the beginning again. The peanut eaters, entertained At my mother’s death, will go home, Each carrying their memory of her, Lifeless – a souvenir. Maybe they’ll buy the video. Watching someone on TV Means all they have to do Is press ‘pause’ If they want to boil a kettle, While my mother holds her breath on screen To finish dying after tea. The filmmakers have collected The body parts, They want me to see. They require dressings to cover the joins And disguise the prosthetics In their remake of my mother; They want to use her poetry As stitching and sutures To give it credibility. They think I should love it – Having her back again, they think I should give them my mother’s words To fill the mouth of their monster, Their Sylvia Suicide Doll, Who will walk and talk And die at will, And die, and die And forever be dying.”

SadnessDepressionSuicideMental HealthMemoirDepression RecoverySylvia PlathFrieda Hughes
Book:The Book of Mirrors
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“I didn’t have memories, new I made, this, beneath ancient evergreen Populus trees… Yes, evergreen Populus trees always are, yet with cold I’m not one that’s well known to spar… With gentle headstrongness I made my own path, with which I can get to the forest(, like Plath)… In forests, folk sparce are, yet all of the trees, growing like soldiers, to be many are free…”

GrowthMemoriesAncientFreeTreesForestSoldiersSylvia PlathPopulusHeadstrongness
Book:На чист Български...: Pristine Bulgarian sayings...
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“Wars, wars, wars': reading up on the region I came across one moment when quintessential Englishness had in fact intersected with this darkling plain. In 1906 Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible for British colonies, had been honored by an invitation from Kaiser Wilhelm II to attend the annual maneuvers of the Imperial German Army, held at Breslau. The Kaiser was 'resplendent in the uniform of the White Silesian Cuirassiers' and his massed and regimented infantry... reminded one more of great Atlantic rollers than human formations. Clouds of cavalry, avalanches of field-guns and—at that time a novelty—squadrons of motor-cars (private and military) completed the array. For five hours the immense defilade continued. Yet this was only a twentieth of the armed strength of the regular German Army before mobilization. Strange to find Winston Churchill and Sylvia Plath both choosing the word 'roller,' in both its juggernaut and wavelike declensions, for that scene.”

WarPoetryGermanyBritish EmpireCarsInfantryCavalryChurchillSylvia PlathKaiserEnglishness1906Kaiser Wilhelm IiGerman ArmyGerman EmpireUpper SilesiaWroclawBritish Overseas TerritoriesSilesia
Book:Hitch 22: A Memoir
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“فکر می‌کردم زندگی مثل درخت انجیر است؛ هر شاخه‌اش راهی متفاوت، آینده‌ای متفاوت. اما وقتی به همه نگاه می‌کردم، نمی‌توانستم انتخاب کنم و انجیرها یکی‌یکی جلوی چشمم خشک می‌شدند و می‌افتادند.”

NovelSylvia PlathرمانAmerican Writersسیلویا پلاتنویسندگان آمریکا
Book:the bell jar
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“[Sylvia Plath] was now far along a peculiarly solitary road on which not many would risk following her. So it was important for her to know that her messages were coming back clear and strong. Yet not even her determinedly bright self-reliance could disguise the loneliness that came from her almost palpably, like a heat haze. She asked for neither sympathy nor help but, like bereaved widow at a wake, she simply wanted company in her mourning.”

StrongCompanyClearRiskLonelinessMessagesMourningSympathyHelpSolitarySelf RelianceRoadFollowSylvia PlathWidow
Book:The Savage God: A Study of Suicide
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“THE MOON AND THE YEW TREE This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue. The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God, Prickling my ankles and murmuring of their humility. Fumy, spiritous mists inhabit this place Separated from my house by a row of headstones. I simply cannot see where there is to get to. The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here. Twice on Sunday, the bells startle the sky Eight great tongues affirming the Resurrection. At the end, they soberly bong out their names. The yew tree points up. It has a Gothic shape. The eyes lift after it and find the moon. The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary. Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls. How I would like to believe in tenderness The face of the effigy, gentled by candles, Bending, on me in particular, its mild eyes. I have fallen a long way. Clouds are flowering Blue and mystical over the face of the stars. Inside the church, the saints will be all blue, Floating on their delicate feet over the cold pews, Their hands and faces stiff with holiness. The moon sees nothing of this. She is bald and wild. And the message of the yew tree is blackness -- blackness and silence. --written 22 October 1961”

ArielSylvia PlathThe Moon And The Yew Tree
Book:Ariel
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“In a sense she [Sylvia Plath] was the victim of an obsessive talent that sent her out into the world to gather sensations and seek wounds that could provide creative inspiration. Having acquired the wounds she stuck her fingers into them, turning the pain and blood into lines of highly subjective poetry that both repel and fascinate the reader.”

InspirationCreativityTalentSylvia PlathConfessional Poetry
Book:A Closer Look at Ariel: A Memory of Sylvia Plath
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“So what do you think?’ He asked, holding up the book. ‘I think Salinger is a closet paedophile,’ I replied placidly and was surprised and comforted by this minuscule, acidic, bitter Sylvia Plath like mocking, sniping tone that had crept into my voice. ‘The main character Seymour is a fully grown man and a pervert who befriends young girls with his storytelling and swimming, just to get close enough to groom them in preparation for the inevitable sexual assault he lusts after. You might have noticed for example in A Perfect Day For Bananafish he grabs the young girls-’ ‘Sybil.’ ‘He grabs Sybil’s ankles while lying on the beach and again when he pushes her in the water,’ I continued. ‘He goes too far when he kisses the bottom of her foot which makes even a four-year-old yell out in fear, knowing a line had been crossed. Frustrated Seymour walks away and goes back to his hotel where he kills himself in shame.”

BookQuoteSylvia PlathJ D Salinger
Author:J.D. Gallagher
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“I am as happy here as I have ever been in my life: Ted and I take a long walk each day up to the moors (It’s generally rainy, or at least overcast) and never have I loved country so! All you can see us dark hills of heather stretching toward the horizon, as if you were striding on top of the world; last night at sunset the horizontal light turned us both luminous pink as we hiked in waterproof boots in the wuthering free wind, starting up rabbits that flicked away with a white flag of tail, staring back at the black-faced, gray furred moor sheep that graze, apparently wild, and with their curling horns looking like primeval yellow-eyed druid monsters. I never thought I could like any country as well as the ocean, but these moors are really even better, with the great luminous emerald lights changing always, and the animals and wildness. Read “Wuthering Heights” again here, and really felt it this time more than ever. --from a letter to her mother Aurelia Schober Plath, written on 11 September 1956”

Sylvia PlathYorkshireWuthering HeightsTed Hughes
Book:Letters of Sylvia Plath, Volume I: 1940-1956
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“For the next nine months, Sylvia would report on campus trends, politics, tastes, style. It was an honor, but it was grueling. Sylvia was overworked. She had boyfriend problems. She longed for Europe. She broke her leg in a skiing accident. Her best friend, Marcia Brown, had gotten engaged and moved off campus - other girls were away on their junior year abroad. The whole campus seemed mired in some bleak haze- there were suicide attempts, abortions, disappearances, and hasty marriages. Sylvia coped with shopping binges in downtown Northhampton- sheer blouses, French pumps, red cashmere sweaters, white skirts, and tight black pullovers - clothes more suited to voguish amusements than studying. Everyone wanted to be one of Mademoiselle's guest editors, but Sylvia needed it - some shot of glamour to pull her out of the mud.”

WorkSylvia PlathWorn DownBleak And Dreary Environment
Book:Pain, Parties, Work: Sylvia Plath in New York, Summer 1953
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“It was the day after Christmas and a gray sky bellied over us, fat with snow. I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas, as if whatever it was the pine boughs and the candles and the silver and gilt-ribboned presents and the birch-log fires and the Christmas turkey and the carols at the piano promised never came to pass.”

ChristmasSylvia PlathThe Bell JarSeasonal Depression
Book:the bell jar
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