01c. 1947 ADPoppies in JulyLittle poppies, little hell flames,Do you do no harm?You flicker. I cannot touch you.I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.And it exhausts me to watch youFlickering like that, wrinkly and clear red, like the skin of a mouth.A mouth just bloodied.Little bloody skirts!There are fumes that I cannot touch.Where are your opiates, your nauseous capsules?If I could bleed, or sleep!If my mouth could marry a hurt like that!Or your liquors seep to me, in this glass capsule,Dulling and stilling.But colorless. Colorless.Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
02c. 1947 ADI knew I should be grateful to Mrs Guinea, only I couldn't feel a thing. If Mrs Guinea had given me a ticket to Europe, or a round-the-world cruise, it wouldn't have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or a street cafe in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
03c. 1947 ADI moved in front of the medicine cabinet. If I looked in the mirror while I did it, it would be like watching somebody else, in a book or a play.Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
04c. 1947 ADMy mother smiled. "I knew my baby wasn't like that."I looked at her. "Like what?""Like those awful people. Those awful dead people at that hospital." She paused. "I knew you'd decide to be all right again.Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
05c. 1947 ADThe reason why I hadn't washed my clothes or my hair was because it seemed so silly.I saw the days of the year stretching ahead like a series of bright, white boxes, and separating one box from another was sleep, like a black shade. Only for me, the long perspective of shades that set off one box from the next had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue.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.I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it.Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
06c. 1947 ADI could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
07c. 1947 ADI have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between...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 / quote ↗
08c. 1947 ADThe one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
09c. 1947 ADI may have made a straight A in physics, but I was panic-struck. Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it.Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
10c. 1947 ADI didn't want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned upand be utterly empty.How free it is, you have no idea how free - The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,And it asks for nothing. ~ Tulips (1961)Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
12c. 1947 ADGod, 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 / quote ↗
13c. 1947 ADI 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 / quote ↗
14c. 1947 ADI wish to cry. Yet, I laugh, and my lipstick leaves a red stain like a bloody crescent moon on the top of the beer can.Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
15c. 1947 ADI am drowning in negativism, self-hate, doubt, madness - and even I am not strong enough to deny the routine, the rote, to simplify. No, I go plodding on, afraid that the blank hell in back of my eyes will break through, spewing forth like a dark pestilence; afraid that the disease which eats away the pith of my body with merciless impersonality will break forth in obvious sores and warts, screaming "Traitor, sinner, imposter.Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
16c. 1947 ADUsually after a good puke you feel better right away. We hugged each other and then said good-bye and went off to opposite ends of the hall to lie down in our own rooms. There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
17c. 1947 ADI 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 / quote ↗
18c. 1947 ADWhat obsession do men have for destruction and murder? Who do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled 'enemy?Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
19c. 1947 ADWhat I hate is the thought of being under a man's thumb," I had told Doctor Nolan. "A man doesn't have a worry in the world, while I've got a baby hanging over my head like a big stick, to keep me in line.Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
20c. 1947 ADYou will never win anyone through pity. You must create the right kind of dream, the sober, adult kind of magic: illusion born from disillusion.Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
21c. 1947 ADStupid girl. You will never win anyone through pity. You must create the right kind of dream, the sober, adult kind of magic: illusion born from disillusion.Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
22c. 1947 ADYou must create the right kind of dream, the sober, adult kind of magic: illusion born from disillusion.Sylvia Plath / quote ↗
24c. 1947 ADSo many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested inSylvia Plath / quote ↗
