Texts
If I Knew Now What I Wanted (1)
I want to love somebody because I want to be loved. In a rabbit-fear I may hurl myself under the wheels of the car because the lights terrify me, and under the dark blind death of the wheels I will b...
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Living in a Dream or in an Artifice (2)
Is anyone anywhere happy? No, not unless they are living in a dream or in an artifice that they or someone else has made. For a time I was lulled in the arms of a blind organism with breasts full of ...
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Being Born a Woman Is an Awful Tragedy (3)
Being born a woman is an awful tragedy. Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars�to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording�all is spo...
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
A Feeling of Expectancy (4)
There are times when a feeling of expectancy comes to me, as if something is there, beneath the surface of my understanding, waiting for me to grasp it. It is the same tantalizing sensation when you ...
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The Swift Passage of Time (5)
I seem to grow more acutely conscious of the swift passage of time as I grow older. When I was small, days and hours were long and spacious, and there was play and acres of leisure, and many children...
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
I Feel Good with My Husband (6)
I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and...
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
I Would Like To Be Everyone (7)
I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love's not impersonal yet ...
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Life Is Loneliness (8)
God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to...
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
Choosing One Meant Losing All the Rest (9)
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 ha...
The Bell Jar
The Bell Jar
Live and Feel All the Shades (10)
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 fee...
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays
Essays