Sylvia Plath

"But 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."

"“I need a father. I need a mother. I need some older, wiser being to cry to. I talk to God, but the sky is empty.”"

"Oh what a poet I will flay myself into."

"I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited."

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

"I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy."

"Lorelei It is no night to drown in:A full moon, river lapsing Black beneath bland mirror-sheen,The blue water-mists dropping Scrim after scrim like fishnets Though fishermen are sleeping,The massive castle turrets Doubling themselves in a glass All stillness. Yet these shapes float Up toward me, troubling the face Of quiet. From the nadir They rise, their limbs ponderous With richness, hair heavier Than sculptured marble. They sing Of a world more full and clear Than can be. Sisters, your song Bears a burden too weighty For the whorled ear's listening Here, in a well-steered country,Under a balanced ruler. Deranging by harmony Beyond the mundane order,Your voices lay siege. You lodge On the pitched reefs of nightmare,Promising sure harborage;By day, descant from borders Of hebetude, from the ledge Also of high windows. Worse Even than your maddening Song, your silence. At the source Of your ice-hearted calling-Drunkenness of the great depths. O river, I see drifting Deep in your flux of silver Those great goddesses of peace. Stone, stone, ferry me down there."

"Ennui Tea leaves thwart those who court catastrophe,designing futures where nothing will occur:cross the gypsy’s palm and yawning shewill still predict no perils left to conquer. Jeopardy is jejune now: naïve knightfinds ogres out-of-date and dragons unheardof, while blasé princesses indicttilts at terror as downright absurd. The beast in Jamesian grove will never jump,compelling hero’s dull career to crisis;and when insouciant angels play God’s trump,while bored arena crowds for once look eager,hoping toward havoc, neither pleas nor prizesshall coax from doom’s blank door lady or tiger."

"I must be lean & write & make worlds beside this to live in."

"I fancied you'd return the way you said,But I grow old and I forget your name. --From the poem "Mad Girl's Love Song"

"The tongues of hell are dull."

"Sometimes I feel like I’m not solid. I’m hollow. There’s nothing behind my eyes. I’m a negative of a person. All I want is blackness, blackness and silence."

"All I want is blackness. Blackness and silence."

"Fixed stars govern a life"

"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 have done, this year, what I said I would: overcome my fear of facing a blank page day after day, acknowledging myself, in my deepest emotions, a writer, come what may."

"How we need that security. How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this. I need someone to pour myself into."

"Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing."

"Stupid girl. You will never win anyone through pity. You must create the right kind of dream, the sober, adult kind of magic: illusion born from disillusion."

"You must create the right kind of dream, the sober, adult kind of magic: illusion born from disillusion."