Quotes by Sylvia Plath

“LADY LAZARUSI have done it again.One year in every tenI manage it--A sort of walking miracle, my skinBright as a Nazi lampshade,My right footA paperweight,My face a featureless, fineJew linen.Peel ...”

“Ill never speak to God again.”

“The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of storeys, you might still be alive when you hit bottom.”

“What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination.”

“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.”

“I love the people,' I said. 'I have room in me for love, and for ever so many little lives.”

“I didnt want any flowers, I only wantedTo lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.How free it is, you have no idea how freeThe peacefulness is so big it dazes you,And it asks nothing, a na...”

“I talk to God but the sky is empty.”

“Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled enemy?”

“The night sky is only a sort of carbon paper,Blueblack, with the much-poked periods of starsLetting in the light, peephole after peephole--- A bonewhite light, like death, behind all things.”

“Not easy to state the change you made.If I'm alive now, I was dead,Though, like a stone, unbothered by it.”

“God, who am I?”

“My flesh winced, in cowardice, from such a death.”

“In the German tongue, in the Polish townScraped flat by the rollerOf wars, wars, wars ...”

“The human mind is so limited it can only build an arbitrary heaven and usually the physical comforts they endow it with are naively the kind that can be perceived as we humans perceive nothing mo...”

“Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regularsto be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recordingall this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl...”

“I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here.”

“I?I walk alone;The midnight streetSpins itself from under my feet;My eyes shutThese dreaming houses all snuff out;Through a whim of mineOver gables the moon's celestial onionHangs high.IMake houses...”

“I Am VerticalBut I would rather be horizontal.I am not a tree with my root in the soilSucking up minerals and motherly loveSo that each March I may gleam into leaf,Nor am I the beauty of a garden b...”

“I am terrified by this dark thingThat sleeps in me;All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”