Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Sylvia Plath
70 quotes
“Being born a woman is my awful tragedy.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am jealous of men. I envy the man his physical freedom to lead a double life.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Diary entry from 1951 in The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 1950–1962 (New York: Anchor Books) as cited by Cordelia Jenkins in "The 'definitive account' of Sylvia Plath" Financial Times (November 13, 2000)
“How frail the human heart must be — a mirrored pool of thought.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: I Thought I Could Not Be Hurt," quoted in the introduction to Letters Home: Correspondence 1950–1963 (1975) as Plath's first poem, written at age 14
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my lids and all is born again.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) first seen 1953 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mad Girl's Love Song" (1953) from Collected Poems (1981)
“I happened to be at Cambridge. I was sent there by the [US] government on a government grant. And I'd read some of Ted's poems in this magazine and I was very impressed and I wanted to meet him. I went to this little celebration and that's actually where we met. Then we saw a great deal of each other. Ted came back to Cambridge and suddenly we found ourselves getting married a few months later... We kept writing poems to each other. Then it just grew out of that, I guess, a feeling that we both were writing so much and having such a fine time doing it, we decided that this should keep on.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) first seen 1961 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From a 1961 interview, as cited by Martha Murphy Badger at "Remembering poet Sylvia Plath" The Telegraph (27 October 2012)
“What did my fingers do before they held him? What did my heart do, with its love?”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices" (1962), a radio play published in 1968
“So many of us! So many of us!We are shelves, we are Tables, we are meek, We are edible,Nudgers and shovers In spite of ourselves. Our kind multiplies:We shall by morning Inherit the earth. Our foot's in the door.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence. I knew perfectly well the cars were making a noise, and the people in them and behind the lit windows of the buildings were making a noise, and the river was making a noise, but I couldn't hear a thing. The city hung in my window, flat as a poster, glittering and blinking, but it might just as well not have been there at all, for the good it did me.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There must be quite a few things a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I never feel so much myself as when I'm in a hot bath.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Then he just stood there in front of me and I kept on staring at him. The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So 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 some private, totalitarian state.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 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 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.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Instead of the world being divided up into Catholics and Protestants or Republicans and Democrats or white men and black men or even men and women, I saw the world divided into people who had slept with somebody and people who hadn't, and this seemed the only really significant difference between one person and another. I thought a spectacular change would come over me the day I crossed the boundary line.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I began to see why woman-haters could make such fools of women. Woman-haters were like gods: invulnerable and chock-full of power. They descended, and then they disappeared. You could never catch one.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Does she know you love her?" "Of course." I paused. The obstacle seemed unreal to me. "If you love her," I said, "you'll love somebody else someday.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They understood things of the spirit in Japan. They disemboweled themselves when anything went wrong.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I hate her," I said, and waited for the blow to fall. But Doctor Nolan only smiled at me as if something had pleased her very, very much and said, "I suppose you do.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“How did I know that someday — at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere — the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn’t descend again?”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice - patched, retreaded and approved for the road.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now your head, excuse me, is empty. I have the ticket for that. Come here, sweetie, out of the closet. Well, what do you think of that? Naked as paper to startBut in twenty-five years she'll be silver, In fifty, gold. A living doll, everywhere you look. It can sew, it can cook, It can talk, talk, talk.It works, there is nothing wrong with it. You have a hole, it's a poultice. You have an eye, it's an image. My boy, it's your last resort. Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Herr God, Herr Lucifer, Beware. Beware.Out of the ash I rise with my red hair And I eat men like air.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I am incapable of more knowledge. What is this, this face So murderous in its strangle of branches? —Its snaky acids hiss. It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults, That kill, that kill, that kill.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is the light of the mind, cold and planetary. The trees of the mind are black. The light is blue.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right, White as a knuckle and terribly upset. It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You do not do, you do not do Any more, black shoe In which I have lived like a foot For thirty years, poor and white, Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Not God but a swastika So black no sky could squeak through. Every woman adores a Fascist, The boot in the face, the brute Brute heart of a brute like you.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There’s a stake in your fat black heart And the villagers never liked you. They are dancing and stamping on you. They always knew it was you. Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Darling, all night I have been flickering, off, on, off, on. The sheets grow heavy as a lecher's kiss.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The blood jet is poetry, There is no stopping it.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The woman is perfected Her deadBody wears the smile of accomplishment, The illusion of a Greek necessityFlows in the scrolls of her toga, Her bareFeet seem to be saying: We have come so far, it is over.Each dead child coiled, a white serpent, One at each littlePitcher of milk, now empty. She has foldedThem back into her body as petals Of a rose close when the gardenStiffens and odors bleed From the sweet, deep throats of the night flower.The moon has nothing to be sad about, Staring from her hood of bone.She is used to this sort of thing. Her blacks crackle and drag.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Axes After whose stroke the wood rings, And the echoes! Echoes travelling Off from the centre like horses.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These hills are too green and sweet to have tasted salt. I follow the sheep path between them. A last hook brings me To the hills' northern face, and the face is orange rock That looks out on nothing, nothing but a great space Of white and pewter lights, and a din like silversmiths Beating and beating at an intractable metal.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis. They grew their toes and fingers well enough, Their little foreheads bulged with concentration. If they missed out on walking about like people It wasn't for any lack of mother-love.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me, Searching my reaches for what she really is. Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon. I see her back, and reflect it faithfully. She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands. I am important to her. She comes and goes. Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness. In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.”
Sylvia Plath (1932–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source