59 quotes
Out of a gap
A million soldiers run,
Redcoats, every one.
How did I know that someday — at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere — the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?
The Bell Jar (1963)
I talk to God but the sky is empty.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.
I must get back my soul from you; I am killing my flesh without it.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
The blood jet is poetry,
There is no stopping it.
Ariel (1965)
I am made, crudely, for success.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
I began to see why woman-haters could make such fools of women. Woman-haters were like gods: invulnerable and chock-full of power. They descended, and then they disappeared. You could never catch one.
The Bell Jar (1963)
They understood things of the spirit in Japan. They disemboweled themselves when anything went wrong.
The Bell Jar (1963)
Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously near to wanting nothing.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
The abstract kills, the concrete saves.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
It is raining. I am tempted to write a poem. But I remember what it said on one rejection slip: After a heavy rainfall, poems titled RAIN pour in from across the nation.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
Ariel (1965)
If I didn't think, I'd be much happier; if I didn't have any sex organs, I wouldn't waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)
Darling, all night
I have been flickering, off, on, off, on.
The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.
Ariel (1965)
The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.
The Bell Jar (1963)
Then he just stood there in front of me and I kept on staring at him. The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed.
The Bell Jar (1963)
The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper,
Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of stars
Letting in the light, peephole after peephole—
A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.
This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary.
The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.
Ariel (1965)
Wherever I sat — on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok — I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.
The Bell Jar (1963)