God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. 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. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.
Sylvia PlathThat is salvation. To give of love inside. To keep love of life, no matter what, and give to others. Generously.
Sylvia PlathSecretly, in studies and attics and schoolrooms all over America, people must be writing.
Sylvia PlathBut when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get.
Sylvia PlathThe body is amazingly stubborn when it comes to sacrificing itself to the annihilating directions of the mind.
Sylvia PlathI drink sherry and wine by myself because I like it and I get the sensuous feeling of indulgence...luxury, bliss, erotic-tinged.
Sylvia PlathThe one man in the room who was as big as his poems, huge, with hulk and dynamic chunks of words.
Sylvia PlathI felt very low. I had been unmasked only that morning by Jay Cee herself, and I felt now that all the uncomfortable suspicions I had about myself were coming true. After nineteen years of running after good marks and prizes and grants of one sort and another, I was letting up, slowing down, dropping clean out of race.
Sylvia PlathAs a poet I would say everything should be able to come into a poem but I can't put toothbrushes in a poem. I really can't.
Sylvia PlathI think if I had done anything else I would like to have been a doctor. This is the sort of polar opposition to being a writer, I suppose.
Sylvia PlathI am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence.
Sylvia PlathLast year a friend went dark in a nervous city alone, the sea flashing against his glasses, the sea sorted out at last in his inner ear so he could leave this world as he'd entered it through the undependable irrational influence of water. -Kevin Jeffery Clark It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.
Sylvia PlathWe must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward; the poverty of life without dreams is too horrible to imagine.
Sylvia PlathI thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people's eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth.
Sylvia PlathSometimes I feel so stupid and dull and uncreative that I am amazed when people tell me differently.
Sylvia PlathAnd so I rehabilitate myself - staying up late this Friday night in spite of vowing to go to bed early, because it is more important to capture moments like this, keen shifts in mood, sudden veering of direction - than to lose it in slumber.
Sylvia PlathWinning or losing an argument, receiving an acceptance or rejection, is no proof of the validity or value of personal identity. One may be wrong, mistaken, or a poor craftsman, or just ignorant - but this is no indication of the true worth of one's total human identity: past, present and future!
Sylvia PlathI tried to speak in a cool, calm way, but the zombie rose up in my throat and choked me off.
Sylvia PlathNothing 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.
Sylvia PlathThe one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.
Sylvia PlathGod, is this all it is, the ricocheting down the corridor of laughter and tears? Of self-worship and self-loathing? Of glory and disgust?
Sylvia PlathShe stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist.
Sylvia PlathI 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 PlathI would say everything should be able to come into a poem, but I can't put toothbrushes into a poem, I really can't!
Sylvia PlathAnd the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness
Sylvia PlathA dispassionate white sun shone at the summit of the sky. I wanted to hone myself on it till I grew saintly and thin and essential as the blade of a knife.
Sylvia PlathIt's the living, the eating, the sleeping that everyone needs. Ideas don't matter so much after all. My three best friends are Catholic. I can't see their beliefs, but I can see the things they love to do on earth. When you come right down to it, I do believe in the freedom of the individual.
Sylvia PlathI 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.
Sylvia PlathIt was like the first time i saw a cadaver. For weeks afterward the cadavers head, or what was left of it - floated up behind my eggs and bacon at breakfast and in the face of Buddy Willard, who was responsible for my seeing it in the first place, and pretty soon I felt as though I were carrying that cadavers head around with me on a string, like some black, noseless balloon stinking of vinegar.
Sylvia Plath