Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plathwas one of the most renowned and influential poets, novelists, and short story writers of the 20th century. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College at the University of Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a poet and writer. She was married to fellow poet Ted Hughes from 1956 until they separated in September of 1962. They lived together in the United States and then the United Kingdom and had two children, Frieda and Nicholas...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth27 October 1932
CountryUnited States of America
I could never be a complete scholar or a complete housewife ora completewriter: Imustcombinea little of all, and thereby be imperfect in all.
I may have made a straight A in physics, but I was panic-struck. Physics made me sick the whole time I learned it.
Please, I want so badly for the good things to happen.
The abstract kills, the concrete saves.
I talk to God but the sky is empty.
The future is what matters — because one never reaches it, but always stays in the present — like the White Queen who had to run like the wind to remain in the same spot.
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?
The box is only temporary.
I smile, now, thinking: we all like to think we are important enough to need psychiatrists
Go out and do something. It isn’t your room that’s a prison, it’s yourself.
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.
There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice - patched, retreaded and approved for the road.
And I sit here without identity: faceless. My head aches.
Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.