The flames and smoke climbed out of every window / And disappeared with everything that you held dear / You shed not a single tear for the things that you didn't need / 'Cause you knew you were finally free
I’ve heard of Sylvia Plath for a while now, but it wasn’t until I saw some of her quotes on Tumblr that I took notice of her. It was on the day I decided to take some time to look up her quotes, and read over her life story that she became someone to me. I dedicate this page to Sylvia. I’m pretty sure I can relate to her more than any other famous person. I drown in the beauty and rhythm of her words, and they all speak my heart. “Everything she said was like a secret voice speaking straight out of my own bones.” —The Bell Jar (If you are seeking more Sylvia, simply click the title of this page or this, and you can read her biography here.)
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I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.
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I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.
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Is there no way out of the mind?
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Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh had gone through; I dream of what it may go through. I record here the actions of optical nerves, of taste buds, of sensory perception. And, I think: I am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence.
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Let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences.
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Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little? Love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that — I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much, so very much to learn.
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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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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 not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I’ll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time…
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I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit. I have none of the selfless love of my mother. I have none of the plodding, practical love… . . I am, to be blunt and concise, in love only with myself, my puny being with its small inadequate breasts and meager, thin talents. I am capable of affection for those who reflect my own world.
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I like people too much or not at all. I’ve got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.
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I want to be important. By being different. And these girls are all the same.
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My world falls apart, crumbles, ‘The centre cannot hold.’ There is no integrating force, only the naked fear, the urge of self-preservation. I am afraid. I am not solid, but hollow. I feel behind my eyes a numb, paralysed cavern, a pit of hell, a mimicking nothingness. I never thought. I never wrote, I never suffered. I want to kill myself, to escape from responsibility, to crawl back abjectly into the womb. I do not know who I am, where I am going—and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions. I long for a noble escape from freedom—I am weak, tired, in revolt from the strong constructive humanitarian faith which presupposes a healthy, active intellect and will. There is nowhere to go.
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I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can’t be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.
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So much working, reading, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.
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I have stitched life into me like a rare organ.
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It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative — which ever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it. I am now flooded with despair, almost hysteria, as if I were smothering. As if a great muscular owl were sitting on my chest, its talons clenching & constricting my heart.
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I can never read all the books I want, I can never be all the people I want, I can never live all the lives I want, and 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 life. And I am horribly limited.
