The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end. Sylvia Plath More Quotes by Sylvia Plath More Quotes From Sylvia Plath When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tup and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank into sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies. Sylvia Plath flower sleep lying All I want is blackness. Blackness and silence. Sylvia Plath blackness silence want The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence. Sylvia Plath feminism silence depression Sure, I’m dramatic and sloppily semi-cynical and semi-sentimental. But, in leisure years I could grow and choose my way. Now I am living on the edge. We all are on the brink, and it takes a lot of nerve, a lot of energy, to teeter on the edge, looking over, looking down into the windy blackness and not being quite able to make out, through the yellow, stinking mist, just what lies below in the slime, in the oozing, vomit-streaked slime; and so I could go on, my thoughts, writing much, trying to find the core, the meaning for myself. Sylvia Plath writing lying years I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane. (I think I made you up inside my head.) Sylvia Plath insane moon thinking What did my arms do before they held you? Sylvia Plath arms I like people too much or not at all. Sylvia Plath i-hate-you too-much people I felt overstuffed and dull and disappointed, the way I always do the day after Christmas, as if whatever it was the pine boughs and the candles and the silver and gilt-ribboned presents and the birch-log fires and the Christmas turkey and the carols at the piano promised never came to pass. Sylvia Plath christmas disappointment fire because 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 glasses air depression The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower. Sylvia Plath flower mind tree Why the hell are we conditioned into the smooth strawberry-and-cream Mother-Goose-world, Alice-in-Wonderland fable, only to be broken on the wheel as we grow older and become aware of ourselves as individuals with a dull responsibility in life? Sylvia Plath responsibility mother inspirational The truth comes to me. The truth loves me. Sylvia Plath truth-love But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get. Sylvia Plath truth somewhere-else blue The slime of all my yesterdays rots in the hollow of my skull. Sylvia Plath slime skulls yesterday I talk to God but the sky is empty. Sylvia Plath sad faith god When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn't know. Sylvia Plath bell-jar said wanted The box is only temporary. Sylvia Plath boxes temporary 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 day had suddenly snapped up, and I could see day after day after day glaring ahead of me like a white, broad, infinitely desolate avenue. Sylvia Plath next-day sleep years And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness Sylvia Plath new-horizons loneliness moving Feel oddly barren. My sickness is when words draw in their horns and the physical world refuses to be ordered, recreated, arranged and selected. I am a victim of it then, not a master. Sylvia Plath sickness victim world
