I write only because There is a voice within me That will not be still Sylvia Plath More Quotes by Sylvia Plath More Quotes From Sylvia Plath To annihilate the world by annihilation of oneself is the deluded height of desperate egoism. Sylvia Plath desperate height world Sometimes I nursed starfish alive in jam jars of seawater and watched them grow back lost arms. On this day, this awful birthday of otherness, my rival, somebody else, I flung the starfish against a stone. Let it perish. Sylvia Plath rivals alive jam I don't know what started me, I just wrote poetry from the time was quite small. I guess I liked nursery rhymes and I guess I thought I could do the same thing. I wrote my first poem, my first published poem, when I was eight-and-a-half years old. It came out in The Boston Traveller and from then on, I suppose, I've been a bit of a professional. Sylvia Plath boston eight years I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus Sylvia Plath stars mother baby 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 tears sex thinking I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I should any more. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I shouldn't, the way Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired. Sylvia Plath tired depression way 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 party grief loneliness I could never be a complete scholar or a complete housewife ora completewriter: Imustcombinea little of all, and thereby be imperfect in all. Sylvia Plath housewife imperfect littles I laid my face to the smooth face of the marble and howled my loss into the cold salt rain. Sylvia Plath salt rain loss I 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 panic sick may I buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night. I couldn't see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to. Sylvia Plath darkness night looks I must be lean & write & make worlds beside this to live in. Sylvia Plath writing world Widow. The word consumes itself. Sylvia Plath widowers widowhood widows Cold glass, how you insert yourself Between myself and myself. I scratch like a cat. The blood that runs is dark fruit- An effect, a cosmetic. You smile. No, it is not fatal. Sylvia Plath cat dark running God, how I ricochet between certainties and doubts. Sylvia Plath ricochet certainty doubt I feel self-repressed again. The old fall disease. Where is my willpower? The idea of a life gets in the way of my life...I dream too much, work too little. Sylvia Plath self dream fall I am so hungry for a big smashing creative burgeoning burdened love. Sylvia Plath hungry creative inspirational Read widely of others' experiences, even if it'd be more comfortable to snuggle back in the comforting cotton-wool of blissful ignorance. Sylvia Plath ignorance inspirational life So I kiss him, and there is the great dark sea ahead. Sylvia Plath kissing sea dark I have no preconceptions. Whatever I see, I swallow immediately. Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike. I am not cruel, only truthful. Sylvia Plath preconceptions truthful dislike