"I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy."
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Sylvia Plath quotes (page 4 of 31)
610 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Apparently, the most difficult feat for a Cambridge male is to accept a woman not merely as feeling, not merely as thinking, but as managing a complex, vital interweaving of both."
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"Love set you going like a fat gold watch. The midwife slapped your footsoles, and your bald cry Took its place among the elements."
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"I love my rejection slips. They show me I try."
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"I lean to you, numb as a fossil. Tell me I'm here."
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"So learn about life. Cut yourself a big slice with the silver server, a big slice of pie. Open your eyes. Let life happen."
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"I am not cruel, only truthful."
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"I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print, the way you crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful big green fig-tree."
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"I am myself. That is not enough."
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"I sank back in the gray, plush seat and closed my eyes. The air of the bell jar wadded round me and I couldn't stir."
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"Life has been some combination of fairy-tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self-questioning."
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"I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo."
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"How can you be so many women to so many strange people, oh you strange girl?"
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"Let's face it: I'm scared, scared and frozen. First, I guess, I'm afraid for myself ... the old primitive urge for survival. It's getting so I live every moment with terrible intensity. Last night, driving back from Boston, I lay back in the car and let the colored lights come at me, the music from the radio, the reflection of the guy driving. It all flowed over me with a screaming ache of pain ... 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 feel that this may be the good-bye, the last time, it hits you harder."
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"We stayed at home to write, to consolidate our outstretched selves."
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"God, if ever I have come close to wanting to commit suicide, it is now, with the groggy sleepless blood dragging through my veins, and the air thick and gray with rain ... I fell into bed again this morning, begging for sleep, withdrawing into the dark, warm, fetid escape from action, from responsibility. No good."
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"I am afraid of getting older … I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day—spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote. I want to be free…. I want, I want to think, to be omniscient…. I think I would like to call myself ‘The girl who wanted to be God."
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"I lay and cried, and began to feel again, to admit I was human, vulnerable, sensitive. I began to remember how it had been before; how there was that germ of positive creativeness. Character is fate; and damn, I'd better work on my character. I had been withdrawing into a retreat of numbness: it is so much safer to NOT feel, NOT to let the world touch one."
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"I talk to God but the sky is empty."
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"…I hate myself for not being able to go downstairs naturally and seek comfort in numbers. I hate myself for having to sit here and be torn between I know not what within me."
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