Sylvia Plath

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

“Stars open among the lilies.Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?This is the silence of astounded souls.--from "Crossing the Water", written 1962”

“I couldn’t see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.”

“I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn’t do at all.”

“I don’t care about anyone, and the feeling is quite obviously mutual.”

“And what is happy? It is a going always on. There is something better to be done than I have done, and spurred by the fair delusion of progress, I will seek to progress, to whip myself on, to more and more- to learning. Always.”

“I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?”

“I saw the years of my life spaced along a road in the form of telephone poles threaded together by wires. I counted one, two, three... nineteen telephone poles, and then the wires dangled into space, and try as I would, I couldn't see a single pole beyond the nineteenth.”

“Love is the bone and sinew of my curse.--from "Poem For A Birthday - The Stones", written 1959”

“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they executed the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York. I'm stupid about executions. The idea of being electrocuted makes me sick, and that's all there was to read about in the papers -- goggle-eyed headlines staring up at me at every street corner and at the fusty, peanut-smelling mouth of every subway. It had nothing to do with me, but I couldn't help wondering what it would be like, being burned alive all along your nerves.I thought it must be the worst thing in the world.New York was bad enough. By nine in the morning the fake, country-wet freshness that somehow seeped in overnight evaporated like the tail end of a sweet dream. Mirage-gray at the bottom of their granite canyons, the hot streets wavered in the sun, the car tops sizzled and glittered, and the dry, cindery dust blew into my eyes and down my throat.”

“I think I made you up inside my head.”

“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?”

“I decided I would put off the novel until I had gone to Europe and had a lover, and that I would never learn a word of shorthand. If I never learned shorthand I would never have to use it.”

“Why honey, don't you want to get dressed?"My mother took care never to tell me to do anything. She would only reason with me sweetly, like one intelligent, mature person with another. It's almost three in the afternoon." I'm writing a novel," I said. "I haven't got time to change into this and change into that.”

“Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people. ”

“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.”

“Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.”

“Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through.”

“If you have no past or no 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. But the cold reasoning mass of gray entrail in my cranium which parrots, ‘I think, therefore I am,’ whispers that there is always the turning, the upgrade, the new slant. And so I wait.”

“I think I am mad sometimes.”

“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.”

“I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.”

“The sky leans on me, me, the one upright among all horizontals.”

“Eternity bores me,I never wanted it.From the poem "Years", 16 November 1962”

“At twenty I tried to dieAnd get back, back, back to you.I thought even the bones would do.--from "Daddy", written 12 October 1962”

“Every woman adores a Fascist,The boot in the face, the bruteBrute heart of a brute like you.–-from "Daddy", written 12 October 1962”

“I used to pray to recover you.--from "Daddy", written 12 October 1962”

“No day is safe from news of you.--from "The Rival", written July 1961”

“If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.You leave the same impression Of something beautiful, but annihilating.”

“I am still raw.I say I may be back.You know what lies are for.Even in your Zen heaven we shan't meet.--from "Lesbos", written 18 October 1962”

“Now I am silent, hateUp to my neck,Thick, thick.I do not speak.--from "Lesbos", written 18 October 1962”

“The sun gives you ulcers, the wind gives you T.B.Once you were beautiful.”

“I'm doped and thick from my last sleeping pill.”

“We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you.”

“I am terrified by this dark thingThat sleeps in me;All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.Clouds pass and disperse.Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?Is it for such I agitate my heart?I am incapable of more knowledge.What is this, this faceSo murderous in its strangle of branches? -Its snaky acids kiss.It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faultsThat kill, that kill, that kill.From the poem "Elm", 19 April 1962”

“I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962”

“I have taken a pill to killThe thinPapery feeling.--from "Cut", written 24 October 1962”

“There is a chargeFor the eyeing of my scars, there is a chargeFor the hearing of my heart - It really goes.And there is a charge, a very large charge,For a word or a touchOr a bit of bloodOr a piece of my hair or my clothes.--from "Lady Lazarus", written 23-29 October 1962”

“People or starsRegard me sadly, I disappoint them.From the poem "Sheep in Fog", 2 December 1962”

“A ring of gold with the sun in it?Lies. Lies and a grief.--from "The Couriers", written 4 November 1962”

“They had to call and callAnd pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.--From the poem "Lady Lazarus", written 23-29 October 1962”

“The box is only temporary.”

“ELMI know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear.I do not fear it: I have been there.Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions?Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness?Love is a shadow.How you lie and cry after itListen: these are its hooves: it has gone off, like a horse.All night I shall gallop thus, impetuously,Till your head is a stone, your pillow a little turf, Echoing, echoing.Or shall I bring you the sound of poisons? This is rain now, this big hush.And this is the fruit of it: tin-white, like arsenic.I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets. Scorched to the rootMy red filaments burn and stand, a hand of wires.Now I break up in pieces that fly about like clubs. A wind of such violenceWill tolerate no bystanding: I must shriek.The moon, also, is merciless: she would drag me Cruelly, being barren.Her radiance scathes me. Or perhaps I have caught her.I let her go. I let her goDiminished and flat, as after radical surgery. How your bad dreams possess and endow me.I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps outLooking, with its hooks, for something to love.I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me;All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.Clouds pass and disperse.Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart?I am incapable of more knowledge. What is this, this faceSo murderous in its strangle of branches?——Its snaky acids hiss.It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults That kill, that kill, that kill.--written 19 April 1962”

“If they substituted the word 'Lust' for 'Love' in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth.”

“I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.”

“I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it.”

“Mad Girl's Love SongI shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;I lift my lids and all is born again.(I think I made you up inside my head.)The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,And arbitrary blackness gallops in:I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.I dreamed that you bewitched me into bedAnd sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.(I think I made you up inside my head.)God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:Exit seraphim and Satan's men:I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.I fancied you'd return the way you said,But I grow old and I forget your name.(I think I made you up inside my head.)I should have loved a thunderbird instead;At least when spring comes they roar back again.I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.(I think I made you up inside my head.)”

“Is it the sea you hear in me,Its dissatisfactions?Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962”

“O love, how did you get here?--from "Nick and the Candlestick", written 29 October 1962”

“How we need another soul to cling to.”