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

About 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...

More quotations from Sylvia Plath

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

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

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

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

—Sylvia Plath in The Bell Jar

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

History

23 Nov 2014 Added
26 Oct 2026 Wording changed

Previous wording

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