Sylvia Plath

"The future is what matters — because one never reaches it, but always stays in the present — like the White Queen who had to run like the wind to remain in the same spot."

"When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn't know."

"I can't deceive myself that out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or 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."

"Yes, I was infatuated with you: I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren't having any of those."

"“The blood jet is poetry,There is no stopping it.--from Kindness, written 1 February 1963”"

"“I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.(I think I made you up inside my head.)--from Mad Girl's Love Song: A Villanelle, written 1954”"

"“LADY LAZARUSI have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it--A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade,My right foot A paperweight,My face a featureless, fine Jew linen. Peel off the napkin O my enemy. Do I terrify?--The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?The sour breath Will vanish in a day. Soon, soon the flesh The grave cave ate will be At home on me And I a smiling woman. I am only thirty. And like the cat I have nine times to die. This is Number Three. What a trash To annihilate each decade. What a million filaments. The peanut-crunching crowd Shoves in to see Them unwrap me hand and foot--The big strip tease. Gentlemen, ladies These are my hands My knees. I may be skin and bone,Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman. The first time it happened I was ten. It was an accident. The second time I meant To last it out and not come back at all. I rocked shut As a seashell. They had to call and call And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls. Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call. It's easy enough to do it in a cell. It's easy enough to do it and stay put. It's the theatrical Comeback in broad day To the same place, the same face, the same brute Amused shout:'A miracle!'That knocks me out. There is a charge For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge For the hearing of my heart--It really goes. And there is a charge, a very large charge For a word or a touch Or a bit of blood Or a piece of my hair or my clothes. So, so, Herr Doktor. So, Herr Enemy. I am your opus,I am your valuable,The pure gold baby That melts to a shriek. I turn and burn. Do not think I underestimate your great concern. Ash, ash--You poke and stir. Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--A cake of soap, A wedding ring,A gold filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.-- written 23-29 October 1962”"

"“I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me;All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”"

"“I?I walk alone;The midnight street Spins itself from under my feet;My eyes shut These dreaming houses all snuff out;Through a whim of mine Over gables the moon's celestial onion Hangs high.”"

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

"What a man is is an arrow into the future, and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from."

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

"I have felt great advances in my poetry, the main one being a growing victory over word nuances and a superfluity of adjectives."

"The blood jet is poetry and there is no stopping it."

"Poetry at its best can do you a lot of harm."

"I saw the gooseflesh on my skin. I did not know what made it. I was not cold. Had a ghost passed over? No, it was the poetry."

"Kiss me and you will see how important I am."

"I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am."

"Now and then, when I grow nostalgic about my ocean childhood - the wauling of gulls and the smell of salt, somebody solicitous will bundle me into a car and drive me to the nearest briny horizon."

"But life is long. And it is the long run that balances the short flare of interest and passion."