25 Sylvia Plath Famous Quotes

Sylvia Plath was an American novelist and poet. Plath met and married British poet Ted Hughes, although the two later split. The depressive Plath committed suicide in 1963, garnering accolades after her death for the novel The Bell Jar, and the poetry collections The Colossus and Ariel. In 1982, Plath became the first person to win a posthumous Pulitzer Prize. “I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.” – Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar “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, The Bell Jar “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, The Bell Jar “The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn’t thought about it.” – Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar “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, The Bell Jar “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, The Bell Jar “Ever since I was small I loved feeling somebody comb my hair. It made me go all sleepy and peaceful.” – Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar “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 “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, The Bell Jar “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, The Bell Jar “The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther.” – Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar “Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind of snow, should numb and cover them. But they were part of me. They were my landscape.” – Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar “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, The Bell Jar “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, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath “I desire the things which will destroy me in the end.” – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of 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 Unabridged Journals of 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, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.” – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of 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, The Unabridged Journals of 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, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath “Yes, I want the world’s praise, money, and love, and am furious with anyone…getting ahead of me.” – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of 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, The Unabridged Journals of 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, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath “Why can’t I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is more becoming?” – Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of 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, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath