For many people, the name Sylvia Plath is synonymous with depression. Some of her poems are often considered tragic. But for others, she is seen as a poet without boundaries and an artist whose work transcends the confines of time and space.
The poem “Ariel” was written when she was in a state of complete despair: “nothing makes one feel better than suicide” (Kaminsky). It was published in 1963 and later included in her collection “Ariel.” The poem describes the narrator’s descent into madness that results from being unable to escape from his brain. “The Bell Jar,” her final book, was published posthumously in 1970.
Here are her most famous quotes on life, love, and death to describe her great mindset.
39 Brilliant Sylvia Plath Quotes You Should Read Now
“The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.”
“If the moon smiled, she would resemble you. You leave the same impression Of something beautiful, but annihilating.”
“I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am.”
“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
“I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I’d never seen before in my life.”
“Believe in some beneficent force beyond your own limited self. God, god, god: where are you? I want you, need you: the belief in you and love and mankind.”
“If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.”
“I must bridge the gap between adolescent glitter and mature glow.”
“You are a dream; I hope I never meet you.”
“I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am.”
“The hardest thing is to live richly in the present without letting it be tainted out of fear for the future or regret for the past.”
“I too want to be important. By being different. And these girls are all the same.”
“I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.”
“Please don’t expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.”
“Wear your heart on your skin in this life.”
“And there’s the fallacy of existence: the idea that one could be happy forever and age with a given situation or series of accomplishments.”
“You have to be able to make a real creative life for yourself, before you can expect anyone else to provide one ready-made for you.”
“The blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain.”
“There is so much hurt in this game of searching for a mate, of testing, trying. And you realize suddenly that you forgot it was a game, and turn away in tears.”
“So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.”
“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”
“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.”
“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.”
“When you give someone your whole heart and he doesn’t want it, you cannot take it back. It’s gone forever.”
“Why can’t I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which one fits me and is most becoming?”
“There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.”
“What a man is is an arrow into the future, and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.”
“Freedom is not of use to those who do not know how to employ it.”
“I write only because There is a voice within me That will not be still”
“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?”
“Indecision and reveries are the anesthetics of constructive action.”
“I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow.”
“What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.”
“I may never be happy, but tonight I am content.”
“It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water.”
“There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won’t cure, but I don’t know many of them.”
“I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come.”
“We should meet in another life, we should meet in air, me and you.” “I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.”
