Sylvia Plath

United States
27 Oct 1932 // 11 Feb 1963
Poet / Novelist

Being Born a Woman Is an Awful Tragedy

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 spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night.

Sylvia Plath, in 'The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath'
Search
On Amazon

The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

Sylvia Plath

 

On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
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
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