Sylvia Plath

an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer. 1932-1963

[megairea]

“petaled blood Burns open to the sun’s blade.”

— Sylvia Plath, from The Two Sisters of Persephone, 1956.

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epitaph for fire and flower, sylvia plath

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[ID: an excerpt from ‘Poppies in July,’ a poem by Sylvia Plath 

“You flicker. I cannot touch you. I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.“]

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“My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you.”

— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

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“Because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.”

— Sylvia Plath

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“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of “parties” with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfilment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”

— Sylvia Plath

[nondualreality]

“I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn’t taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers’ sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.”

— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

[megairea]

“— I tried to die / And get back, back, back to you. / I thought even the bones would do.”

— Sylvia Plath, from Daddy; Ariel, 1965.

[xshayarsha]

“Let me come in and suck your life and sorrow from you like a leech sucks blood; let me gorge myself on your sensations and ideas and dreams; let me crawl inside your guts”

— Sylvia Plath, from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath; July 1950 - July 1953.

[xshayarsha]

“My shut eyelids felt sun, and my nose smelled earth, and my skin felt warm wind. Eyes closed, body not yet mine, but still part of something – of air, of earth, of fire, of water –”

— Sylvia Plath, from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath; July 1950 - July 1953.

[justthishumanheart]

If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression Of something beautiful, but annihilating.

— Sylvia Plath, from The Rival

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“It is a wet, warm, gray November day, and the yellow-green trees are letting go their leaves in the sodden wind.”

— Sylvia Plath - from a letter to her mother featured in Letters Home

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““Come here,” he said. “I’ll whisper something: I like you, but not too much. I don’t want to like anybody too much.” Then it hit me and I just blurted, “I like people too much or not at all. I’ve got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.” He was definite. “Nobody knows me.” So that was it; the end. “Goodbye for good, then,” I said. He looked hard at me, a smile twisting his mouth. “You lucky kid; you don’t know how lucky you are.””

— Journal entry from August 1950, Sylvia Plath.

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“… a hundred moons twining in dark leaves, music spilling out and echoing yet inside my head.”

— Sylvia Plath, from a letter to Aurelia Plath written October 8, 1951

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“We grow. It hurts at first.”

Sylvia Plath, from The Collected Poems; “Witch Burning.”

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Sylvia Plath

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​“Today is a lousy day. It is pouring wet cold unsentimental rain and the gray streets are puddled with it and the trees are slippery with it and my feet are muddy with it and the windows are splotched with it and my hair is damp with it and damn it all to hell anyway. There! I feel much better now.”

Sylvia Plath, from a letter to Philip E. McCurdy written c. March 1954