Sylvia Plath - Quodid

About

Picture of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet and author. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and her works include The Colossus and Other Poems (1960), Ariel (1965), and The Bell Jar (1963), a semi-autobiographical novel published one month before her suicide. The Collected Poems were published in 1981, which included previously unpublished works. For this collection Plath was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1982, making her the fourth person to receive this honor posthumously.

Quotes from Sylvia Plath

I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.

—Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar

crying sadness tears fullness

When you are insane, you are busy being insane—all the time.… When I was crazy, that was all I was.

—Sylvia Plath

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

—Sylvia Plath

existence heart listening breathing

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

—Sylvia Plath

relaxation hot bath

Doing all the little tricky things it takes to grow up, step by step, into an anxious and unsettling world.

—Sylvia Plath

The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.

—Sylvia Plath

There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them. Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: "I'll go take a hot bath.

—Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar

The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.

—Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar

That's one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

—Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar

There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room.

—Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar

I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state.

—Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar

Books

Sylvia Plath has the following books quoted on Quodid:

The Bell Jar