Sylvia Plath Quotes

• If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell.

  Sylvia Plath

  The Bell Jar ch. 8 (1963)

  2812

• But everybody has exactly the same smiling frightened face, with the look that says: "I'm important. If you only get to know me, you will see how important I am. Look into my eyes. Kiss me, and you will see how important I am.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.197, Anchor

  3344

• I am not a historian, but I find myself being more and more fascinated by history and now I find myself reading more and more about history. I am very interested in Napoleon, at the present: I'm very interested in battles, in wars, in Gallipoli, the First World War and so on, and I think that as I age I am becoming more and more historical. I certainly wasn't at all in my early twenties.

  Sylvia Plath

  War   Reading   Thinking  

  Source: www.english.illinois.edu

  4576

• I am made, crudely, for success.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.220, Anchor

  4919

• I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.3, Hamilton Books

  4298

• After all, we are nothing more or less than we choose to reveal.

  Sylvia Plath

  3063

• I'm sarcastic, skeptical, and sometimes callous because I'm still afraid, deep down, of letting myself be hurt.

  Sylvia Plath

  245

• Ironically, Henry James' biography comforts me & I long to make known to him his posthumous reputation he wrote, in pain, gave all his life (which is more than I could think of doing I have Ted, will have children but few friends) & the critics insulted & mocked him, readers didn't read him.

  Sylvia Plath

  Thinking  

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.373, Anchor

  427

• You are the one. Solid the spaces lean on, envious. You are the baby in the barn.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2010). “Ariel: The Restored Edition”, p.55, Faber & Faber

  4291

• There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction--every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and excitement at about a million miles an hour.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.11, Hamilton Books

  4191

• I find myself absolutely fulfilled when I have written a poem, when I'm writing one. Having written one, then you fall away very rapidly from having been a poet to becoming a sort of poet in rest, which isn't the same thing at all. But I think the actual experience of writing a poem is a magnificent one.

  Sylvia Plath

  Writing   Thinking  

  Source: www.english.illinois.edu

  2166

• There was a beautiful time.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.29, Hamilton Books

  3426

• I, to you, am lost in the gorgeous errors of flesh.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.136, Anchor

  853

• The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath “Poemas”, Editora Iluminuras Ltda

  4602

• I do not know who I am tonight.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.184, Anchor

  664

• Oh, something is there, waiting for me. Perhaps someday the revelation will burst in upon me and I will see the other side of this monumental grotesque joke. And then I'll laugh. And then I'll know what life is.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.16, Anchor

  2688

• Let me sit in a flowerpot, The spiders won't notice. My heart is a stopped geranium.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2015). “Collected Poems”, p.119, Faber & Faber

  295

• In this particular tub, two knees jut up like icebergs, while minute brown hairs rise on arms and legs in a fringe of kelp; green soap navigates the tidal slosh of seas breaking on legendary beaches; in faith we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2015). “Collected Poems”, p.4, Faber & Faber

  1279

• The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed.

  Sylvia Plath

  Thinking  

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.36, Hamilton Books

  883

• I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.

  Sylvia Plath

  Feminism  

  1979

• It is a feeling that no matter what the ideas or conduct of others, there is a unique rightness and beauty to life which can be shared in openness, in wind and sunlight, with a fellow human being who believes in the same basic principles.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.29, Anchor

  4956

• The one man in the room who was as big as his poems, huge, with hulk and dynamic chunks of words.

  Sylvia Plath

  Inspirational  

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.212, Anchor

  4638

• If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.

  Sylvia Plath

  Feminism  

  2859

• If only I knew what I wanted I could try to see about getting it.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.182, Anchor

  4265

• I never feel so much myself as when I'm in a hot bath.

  Sylvia Plath

  Feminism  

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.13, Hamilton Books

  3718

• …'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.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.23, Anchor

  3586

• And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.

  Sylvia Plath

  Long  

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.19, Anchor

  4443

• I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who ski better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.

  Sylvia Plath

  Writing   Thinking  

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.20, Anchor

  4842

• I talk to God but the sky is empty.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2013). “Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: and other prose writings”, p.162, Faber & Faber

  1792

• Stars open among the lilies. Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens? This is the silence of astounded souls.

  Sylvia Plath

  Sylvia Plath (2015). “Collected Poems”, p.160, Faber & Faber

  4631

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