Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist, and short-story writer. Profoundly inspirational Sylvia Plath quotes will make you look at life differently and help you live a meaningful life.
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Famous Sylvia Plath Quotes
I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am. Sylvia Plath
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. Sylvia Plath
I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, This is what it is to be happy. Sylvia Plath
I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. Sylvia Plath
If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days. Sylvia Plath
If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed. Sylvia Plath
The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn’t thought about it. Sylvia Plath
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self doubt. Sylvia Plath
Of course, I didn’t believe in life after death or the virgin birth or the Inquisition or the infallibility of that little monkey faced Pope or anything, but I didn’t have to let the priest see this, I could just concentrate on my sin, and he would help me repent. Sylvia Plath
Kiss me, and you will see how important I am. Sylvia Plath
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 swallower’s sword and made me feel powerful and godlike. Sylvia Plath
I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, This is what it is to be happy. Sylvia Plath
Ever since I was small I loved feeling somebody comb my hair. It made me go all sleepy and peaceful. Sylvia Plath
I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between. Sylvia Plath
My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you. Sylvia Plath
The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence. Sylvia Plath
I took up the silver knife and cracked off the cap of my egg. Then I put down the knife and looked at it. I tried to think what I had loved knives for, but my mind slipped from the noose of the thought and swung, like a bird, in the center of empty air. Sylvia Plath
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. Sylvia Plath
I felt very still and very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo. Sylvia Plath
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. Sylvia Plath
The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther. Sylvia Plath
If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days. Sylvia Plath
Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind of snow, should numb and cover them. But they were part of me. They were my landscape. Sylvia Plath
Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted. Sylvia Plath
All the heat and fear purged itself. I felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air. Sylvia Plath
Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much so very much to learn. Sylvia Plath
And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. Sylvia Plath
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, fulfillment and companionship but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self consciousness is horrible and overpowering. Sylvia Plath
I desire the things which will destroy me in the end. Sylvia Plath
I like people too much or not at all. I’ve got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them. Sylvia Plath
I wonder why I don’t go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip one hour more of sleep and live. Sylvia Plath
The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn’t thought about it. Sylvia Plath
I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between. Sylvia Plath
We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you. Sylvia Plath
The worst enemy to creativity is self doubt. Sylvia Plath
I talk to God but the sky is empty. Sylvia Plath
Life has been a combination of fairy tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self questioning. Sylvia Plath
There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends. Sylvia Plath
If I didn’t think, I’d be much happier; if I didn’t have any sex organs, I wouldn’t waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time. Sylvia Plath
To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream. Sylvia Plath
Yes, I want the world’s praise, money, and love, and am furious with anyone getting ahead of me. Sylvia Plath
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. It’s like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it’s really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and excitement at about a million miles an hour. Sylvia Plath
Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through. Sylvia Plath
I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo. Sylvia Plath
With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can’t start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. Sylvia Plath
I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it. Sylvia Plath
Why can’t I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is more becoming? Sylvia Plath
I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry. 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
I like people too much or not at all. I’ve got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them. Sylvia Plath
How we need another soul to cling to. Sylvia Plath
If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed. Sylvia Plath
I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe? Sylvia Plath
I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet. Sylvia Plath
I was supposed to be having the time of my life. Sylvia Plath
The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence. Sylvia Plath
Perhaps some day I’ll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow. Sylvia Plath
To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream. Sylvia Plath
I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love’s not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I’ll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time. Sylvia Plath
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
I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give. 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
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
I couldn’t see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to. Sylvia Plath
The worst enemy to creativity is self doubt. Sylvia Plath
I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul de sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawers and closets and suitcases, and shadow under houses and trees and stones, and shadow at the back of people’s eyes and smiles, and shadow, miles and miles and miles of it, on the night side of the earth. 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 the throat and I’d cry for a week. Sylvia Plath
It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it. Sylvia Plath
I wonder why I don’t go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip on hour more of sleep and live. 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
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. Sylvia Plath
I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I’d never seen before in my life. Sylvia Plath
What did my arms do before they held you? Sylvia Plath
The more hopeless you were, the further away they hid you. Sylvia Plath
Life has been some combination of fairy tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self questioning. Sylvia Plath
I felt like a racehorse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone. Sylvia Plath
I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and criticizing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think to think and live; to live and learn this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love. Sylvia Plath
