Sylvia Plath

It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative - whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it.

I am a writer... I am a genius of a writer; I have it in me. I am writing the best poems of my life; they will make my name.

Freedom is not of use to those who do not know how to employ it.

A black-sharded lady keeps me in a parrot cage.

I 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.

I think writers are the most narcissistic people. Well, I musn't say this, I like many of them, a great many of my friends are writers.

I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit. I have none of the selfless love of my mother. I have none of the plodding, practical love. . . . . I am, to be blunt and concise, in love only with myself, my puny being with its small inadequate breasts and meager, thin talents. I am capable of affection for those who reflect my own world.

There I went again, building up a glamorous picture of a man who would love me passionately the minute he met me, and all out of a few prosy nothings.

I dream too much, work too little.

What have I eaten? Lies and smiles.

There is a certain unique and strange delight about walking down an empty street alone.

Worse even than your maddening song, your silence.

Joy:show joy & enjoy: then others will be joyful.

I feel self-repressed again. The old fall disease. Where is my willpower? The idea of a life gets in the way of my life...I dream too much, work too little.

I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty, and Orion walks by and doesn't speak.

If I didn’t think, I’d be much happier.

My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,_x000D_ _x000D_ My tears like vinegar,_x000D_ _x000D_ Or the bitter blinking yellow_x000D_ _x000D_ Of an acetic star._x000D_ _x000D_ Tonight the caustic wind, love,_x000D_ _x000D_ Gossips late and soon,_x000D_ _x000D_ And I wear the wry-faced pucker of_x000D_ _x000D_ The sour lemon moon._x000D_ _x000D_ While like an early summer plum,_x000D_ _x000D_ Puny, green, and tart,_x000D_ _x000D_ Droops upon its wizened stem_x000D_ _x000D_ My lean, unripened heart.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,_x000D_ _x000D_ But I grow old and I forget your name._x000D_ _x000D_ (I think I made you up inside my head.)

Apparently, the most difficult feat for a Cambridge male is to accept a woman not merely as feeling, not merely as thinking, but as managing a complex, vital interweaving of both.

There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them.

You have to be able to make a real creative life for Yourself, before you can expect anyone Else to provide one ready-made for you.