Sylvia Plath was one of the most influential and renowned poets of the 20th century. If her works were to speak, they’d speak of nothing but an exquisite talent, frenzied brilliance, blind ambition, pure sensation and a deep understanding of one’s inner self struggles. Having been an emotionally violent soul and writer is by no surprise the reason why she tried several times to take her own life until she was found dead with carbon monoxide poisoning with her head in the oven at the age of 30. You probably must have stumbled across a few of her quotes over social media, but here‘s a list of some of her top quotes that in my opinion make Sylvia Plath so damn right about life!
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.” – The Bell Jar
“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― The Unabridged journals of Sylvia Plath
“I like people too much or not at all. I’ve got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.”
― The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.”
― The Bell Jar
“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
― The Unabridged journals of Sylvia Plath
When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn’t know.
“Oh, sure you know,” the photographer said.
“She wants,” said Jay Cee wittily, “to be everything.”
“Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences”
― The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
“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”
― The Bell Jar
“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”
― The Bell Jar