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I Always Was Interested In Prose. As A Teenager, I Published Short Stories. And I Always Wanted To Write The Long Short Story, I Wanted To Write A Novel. Now That I Have Attained, Shall I Say, A Respectable Age, And Have Had Experiences, I Feel Much More Interested In Prose, In The Novel. I Feel That In A Novel, For Example, You Can Get In Toothbrushes And All The Paraphernalia That One Finds In Dally Life, And I Find This More Difficult In Poetry.

-Sylvia Plath

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I Always Was Interested

Sylvia Plath

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I Always Was Interested In Prose. As A Teenager, I Published Short Stories. And I Always Wanted To Write The Long Short Story, I Wanted To Write A Novel. Now That I Have Attained, Shall I Say, A Respectable Age, And Have Had Experiences, I Feel Much More Interested In Prose, In The Novel. I Feel That In A Novel, For Example, You Can Get In Toothbrushes And All The Paraphernalia That One Finds In Dally Life, And I Find This More Difficult In Poetry.

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Only I Wasn't Steering Anything, Not Even Myself.

If I Rest, If I Think Inward, I Go Mad.

I Must Say What I Admire Most Is The Person Who Masters An Area Of Practical Experience, And Can Teach Me Something. I Mean, My Local Midwife Has Taught Me How To Keep Bees. Well, She Can't Understand Anything I Write. And I Find Myself Liking Her, May I Say, More Than Most Poets. And Among My Friends I Find People Who Know All About Boats Or Know All About Certain Sports, Or How To Cut Somebody Open And Remove An Organ. I'm Fascinated By This Mastery Of The Practical.

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When I Fell Out Of The Light, I Entered The Stomach Of Indifference, The Wordless Cupboard.

That’s One Of The Reasons I Never Wanted To Get Married. The Last Thing I Wanted Was Infinite Security And To Be The Place An Arrow Shoots Off From. I Wanted Change And Excitement And To Shoot Off In All Directions Myself, Like The Colored Arrows From A Fourth Of July Rocket.

My Wanting To Write Books Annihilates The Original Root Impulse That Would Have Me Bravely And Blunderingly Working On Them.

I Wanted Change And Excitement And To Shoot Off In All Directions Myself, Like The Colored Arrows From A Fourth Of July Rocket.

I Love My Rejection Slips. They Show Me I Try.

My Mother Said The Cure For Thinking Too Much About Yourself Was Helping Somebody Who Was Worse Off Than You.

Poetry, I Feel, Is A Tyrannical Discipline. You've Got To Go So Far, So Fast, In Such A Small Space, That You've Got To Burn Away All The Peripherals.

And You Grit Your Teeth, Despising Yourself For Your Tremulous Sensitivity, And Wondering How Human Beings Can Suffer Their Individualities To Be Mercilessly Crushed Under A Machinelike Dictatorship, Be It Of Industry, State Or Organization, All Their Lives Long.

I Knew Chemistry Would Be Worse, Because I'd Seen A Big Card Of The Ninety-odd Elements Hung Up In The Chemistry Lab, And All The Perfectly Good Words Like Gold And Silver And Cobalt And Aluminum Were Shortened To Ugly Abbreviations With Different Decimal Numbers After Them.

What I Didn't Say Was That Each Time I Picked Up A German Dictionary Or A German Book, The Very Sight Of Those Dense, Black, Barbed-wire Letters Made My Mind Shut Like A Clam.

God, Is This All It Is, The Ricocheting Down The Corridor Of Laughter And Tears? Of Self-worship And Self-loathing? Of Glory And Disgust?

I Do Not Love; I Do Not Love Anybody Except Myself. That Is A Rather Shocking Thing To Admit.

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I Think My Poems Immediately Come Out Of The Sensuous And Emotional Experiences I Have, But I Must Say I Cannot Sympathise With These Cries From The Heart That Are Informed By Nothing Except A Needle Or A Knife, Or Whatever It Is.

The Frost Makes A Flower, The Dew Makes A Star.

Let Me Not Be Weak And Tell Others How Bleeding I Am Internally; How Day By Day It Drips, And Gathers, And Congeals.

So I Began To Think Maybe It Was True That When You Were Married And Had Children It Was Like Being Brainwashed, And Afterward You Went About As Numb As A Slave In A Totalitarian State.

I Am Solitary As Grass. What Is It I Miss? Shall I Ever Find It, Whatever It Is?

I Had Decided I Would Put Off The Novel Until I Had Gone To Europe And Had A Lover.

I Hate Technicolor. Everybody In A Technicolor Movie Seems To Feel Obliged To Wear A Lurid Costume In Each New Scene And To Stand Around Like A Clotheshorse With A Lot Of Very Green Trees Or Very Yellow Wheat Or Very Blue Ocean Rolling Away For Miles And Miles In Every Direction.

I Felt Myself Melting Into The Shadows Like The Negative Of A Person I'd Never Seen Before In My Life.

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.

What Have I Eaten? Lies And Smiles.

I Felt Dumb And Subdued. Every Time I Tried To Concentrate, My Mind Glided Off, Like A Skater, Into A Large Empty Space, And Pirouetted There, Absently.

The Sky Leans On Me, Me, The One Upright Among All Horizontals.

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.

A Terrible Depression Yesterday. Visions Of My Life Petering Out Into A Kind Of Soft-brained Stupor From Lack Of Use.

After All, We Are Nothing More Or Less Than We Choose To Reveal.

I Want To Force Myself Again And Again To Leave The Warmth And Security Of Static Situations And Move Into The World Of Growth And Suffering Where The Real Books Are People's Minds And Souls.

I Began To See Why Woman-haters Could Make Such Fools Of Women. Woman-haters Were Like Gods: Invulnerable And Chock Full Of Power. They Descended, And Then They Disappeared. You Could Never Catch One.

It Is A Feeling That No Matter What The Ideas Or Conduct Of Others, There Is A Unique Rightness And Beauty To Life Which Can Be Shared In Openness, In Wind And Sunlight, With A Fellow Human Being Who Believes In The Same Basic Principles.

I Thought The Most Beautiful Thing In The World Must Be Shadow, The Million Moving Shapes And Cul-de-sacs Of Shadow. There Was Shadow In Bureau Drawers And Closets And Suitcases, And Shadow Under Houses And Trees And Stones, And Shadow At The Back Of People's Eyes And Smiles, And Shadow, Miles And Miles And Miles Of It, On The Night Side Of The Earth.

I Have Never Found Anybody Who Could Stand To Accept The Daily Demonstrative Love I Feel In Me, And Give Back As Good As I Give.

I Couldn’t See The Point Of Getting Up. I Had Nothing To Look Forward To.

One Thing, I Try To Be Honest. And What Is Revealed Is Often Rather Hideously Unflattering.

Oh What A Poet I Will Flay Myself Into.

Talking About My Fears To Others Feeds It.

I Do Not Know Who I Am Tonight.

I Hurl My Heart To Halt His Pace.

I Believe That One Should Be Able To Control And Manipulate Experiences, Even The Most Terrifying, Like Madness, Being Tortured...with An Informed And Intelligent Mind.

If You Pluck Out My Heart To Find What Makes It Move, You’ll Halt The Clock That Syncopates Our Love.

I Am Made, Crudely, For Success.

What Is My Life For And What Am I Going To Do With It? I Don't Know And I'm Afraid. 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.

This Is The Light Of The Mind, Cold And Planetary. The Trees Of The Mind Are Black. The Light Is Blue.

If Only A Group Of People Were More Important To Me Than The Idea Of A Novel, I Might Begin A Novel.

I Have Taken A Pill To Kill The Thin Papery Feeling.

I Have This Demon Who Wants Me To Run Away Screaming If I Am Going To Be Flawed, Fallible. It Wants Me To Think I'm So Good I Must Be Perfect. Or Nothing. I Am, On The Contrary, Something: A Being Who Gets Tired, Has Shyness To Fight, Has More Trouble Than Most Facing People Easily.

A Fierce Brief Fusion Which Dreamers Call Real, And Realists, An Illusion; An Insight Like The Flight Of Birds.

Beached Under The Spumy Blooms, We Lie Sea-sick And Fever-dry.

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.

I Have The One Person I Could Ever Love In This World. Now I Must Work To Be A Person Worthy Of That.

As I Lay On My Back In Bed Staring Up At The Blank, White Ceiling The Stillness Seemed To Grow Bigger And Bigger Until I Felt My Eardrums Would Burst With It.

It Is A Terrible Thing To Be So Open: It Is As If My Heart Put On A Face And Walked Into The World.

Dancing Is The Normal Prelude To Intercourse.

Ever Since I Was Small I Loved Feeling Somebody Comb My Hair. It Made Me Go All Sleepy & Peaceful.

Good To Know That If I Ever Need Attention All I Have To Do Is Die.

Out Of The Ash I Rise With My Red Hair And I Eat Men Like Air.

The Claw Of The Magnolia, Drunk On Its Own Scents, Asks Nothing Of Life.

I Suppose If I Gave Myself The Chance I Could Be An Alcoholic.

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The One Man In The Room Who Was As Big As His Poems, Huge, With Hulk And Dynamic Chunks Of Words.

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And I Am Aware Of My Heart: It Opens And Closes Its Bowl Of Red Blooms Out Of Sheer Love Of Me.

I Didn't Know Shorthand Either. This Meant I Couldn't Get A Good Job After College. My Mother Kept Telling Me Nobody Wanted A Plain English Major. But An English Major Who Knew Shorthand Would Be Something Else Again. Everybody Would Want Her. She Would Be In Demand Among All The Up-and-coming Young Men And She Would Transcribe Letter After Thrilling Letter. The Trouble Was, I Hated The Idea Of Serving Men In Any Way. I Wanted To Dictate My Own Thrilling Letters.

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This Seemed A Dreary And Wasted Life For A Girl With Fifteen Years Of Straight A's, But I Knew That's What Marriage Was Like, Because Cook And Clean And Wash Was Just What Buddy Willard's Mother Did From Morning Till Night, And She Was The Wife Of A University Professor And Had Been A Private School Teacher Herself.

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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.

Love Life Day By Day, Color By Color, Touch By Touch.

You Walked In, Laughing, Tears Welling Confused, Mingling In Your Throat. How Can You Be So Many Women To So Many People, Oh You Strange Girl?

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And By The Way, Everything In Life Is Writable About If You Have The Outgoing Guts To Do It, And The Imagination To Improvise. The Worst Enemy To Creativity Is Self-doubt.

Sometimes I Feel So Stupid And Dull And Uncreative That I Am Amazed When People Tell Me Differently.

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The Box Is Only Temporary.

I Have Suffered The Atrocity Of Sunsets.

A Black-sharded Lady Keeps Me In A Parrot Cage.

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And So I Rehabilitate Myself - Staying Up Late This Friday Night In Spite Of Vowing To Go To Bed Early, Because It Is More Important To Capture Moments Like This, Keen Shifts In Mood, Sudden Veering Of Direction - Than To Lose It In Slumber.

I Am Myself. That Is Not Enough.

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What I Fear Most, I Think, Is The Death Of The Imagination.

How Can I Tell Bob That My Happiness Streams From Having Wrenched A Piece Out Of My Life, A Piece Of Hurt And Beauty, And Transformed It To Typewritten Words On Paper? How Can He Know I Am Justifying My Life, My Keen Emotions, My Feeling, By Turning It Into Print?

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A Million Years Of Evolution, Eric Said Bitterly, And What Are We? Animals.

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Winter Is For Women The Woman Still At Her Knitting, At The Cradle Of Spanish Walnut, Her Body A Bulb In The Cold And Too Dumb To Think.

I'm Sarcastic, Skeptical, And Sometimes Callous Because I'm Still Afraid, Deep Down, Of Letting Myself Be Hurt.

I Feel Terribly Vulnerable And 'not-myself' When I'm Not Writing.

There I Went Again, Building Up A Glamorous Picture Of A Man Who Would Love Me Passionately The Minute He Met Me, And All Out Of A Few Prosy Nothings.

I Don't Know What Started Me, I Just Wrote Poetry From The Time Was Quite Small. I Guess I Liked Nursery Rhymes And I Guess I Thought I Could Do The Same Thing. I Wrote My First Poem, My First Published Poem, When I Was Eight-and-a-half Years Old. It Came Out In The Boston Traveller And From Then On, I Suppose, I've Been A Bit Of A Professional.

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Nothing Stinks Like A Pile Of Unpublished Writing.

Intoxicated With Madness, I'm In Love With My Sadness

I Have Stitched Life Into Me Like A Rare Organ

If Only I Can Find Him... The Man Who Will Be Intelligent, Yet Physically Magnetic And Personable. If I Can Offer That Combination, Why Shouldn't I Expect It In A Man?

I Felt My Lungs Inflate With The Onrush Of Scenery—air, Mountains, Trees, People. I Thought, "this Is What It Is To Be Happy.

I Always Was Interested In Prose. As A Teenager, I Published Short Stories. And I Always Wanted To Write The Long Short Story, I Wanted To Write A Novel. Now That I Have Attained, Shall I Say, A Respectable Age, And Have Had Experiences, I Feel Much More Interested In Prose, In The Novel. I Feel That In A Novel, For Example, You Can Get In Toothbrushes And All The Paraphernalia That One Finds In Dally Life, And I Find This More Difficult In Poetry.

I Am Not A Historian, But I Find Myself Being More And More Fascinated By History And Now I Find Myself Reading More And More About History. I Am Very Interested In Napoleon, At The Present: I'm Very Interested In Battles, In Wars, In Gallipoli, The First World War And So On, And I Think That As I Age I Am Becoming More And More Historical. I Certainly Wasn't At All In My Early Twenties.

Tomorrow I Will Curse The Dawn, But There Will Be Other, Earlier Nights, And The Dawns Will Be No Longer Hell Laid Out In Alarms And Raw Bells And Sirens.

I Decided I Would Put Off The Novel Until I Had Gone To Europe And Had A Lover, And That I Would Never Learn A Word Of Shorthand. If I Never Learned Shorthand I Would Never Have To Use It.

There Is A Charge For The Eyeing Of My Scars, There Is A Charge For The Hearing Of My Heart - It Really Goes. And There Is A Charge, A Very Large Charge, For A Word Or A Touch Or A Bit Of Blood Or A Piece Of My Hair Or My Clothes.

I Wanted To Tell Her That If Only Something Were Wrong With My Body It Would Be Fine, I Would Rather Have Anything Wrong With My Body Than Something Wrong With My Head, But The Idea Seemed So Involved And Wearisome That I Didn’t Say Anything. I Only Burrowed Down Further In The Bed.

I Must Learn More About These People―try To Understand Them, Put Myself In Their Place. No, Instead I Am So Busy Keeping My Head Above Water That I Scarcely Know Who I Am, Much Less Who Anyone Else Is.

No, I Won't Try To Escape Myself By Losing Myself In Artificial Chatter 'did You Have A Nice Vacation?' 'oh, Yes, And You?' I'll Stay Here And Try To Pin That Loneliness Down.

The Woman Is Perfected. Her Dead Body Wears The Smile Of Accomplishment.

A Living Doll, Everywhere You Look. It Can Sew, It Can Cook, It Can Talk, Talk, Talk. . . . My Boy, It's Your Last Resort. Will You Marry It, Marry It, Marry It.

It Was My First Big Chance, But Here I Was, Sitting Back And Letting It Run Through My Fingers Like So Much Water.

I Must Get My Soul Back From You; I Am Killing My Flesh Without It.

I Am Silver And Exact.i Have No Preconceptions.

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 Abstract Kills, The Concrete Saves.

I Am But One More Drop In The Great Sea Of Matter, Defined, With The Ability To Realize My Existence.

In Spite Of Everything, I Still Have My Good Old Sense Of Humor.

I Am Jealous Of Those Who Think More Deeply, Who Write Better, Who Draw Better, Who Ski Better, Who Look Better, Who Live Better, Who Love Better Than I.

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I Felt Wise And Cynical As All Hell.

O Love, How Did You Get Here?

The Constant Struggle In Mature Life, I Think, Is To Accept The Necessity Of Tragedy And Conflict, And Not To Try To Escape To Some Falsely Simple Solution Which Does Not Include These More Somber Complexities.

I Said: I Must Remember This, Being Small.

I Am Terrified By This Dark Thing That Sleeps In Me.

And I Identify Too Closely With My Reading, With My Writing.

We Walk The Plank With Strangers.

... Stop Trying To Get Me To Write About 'decent Courageous People' -- Read The Ladies' Home Journal For Those! ... I Believe In Going Through And Facing The Worst, Not Hiding From It.

Is Anyone Anywhere Happy?

I Took A Deep Breath And Listened To The Old Bray Of My Heart. I Am. I Am. I Am.

I Laid My Face To The Smooth Face Of The Marble And Howled My Loss Into The Cold Salt Rain.

When They Asked Me What I Wanted To Be I Said I Didn't Know.

Is It The Sea You Hear In Me? Its Dissatisfactions? Or The Voice Of Nothing, That Was Your Madness? Love Is A Shadow. How You Lie And Cry After It.

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If I Didn’t Think, I’d Be Much Happier.

The Blood Of Love Welled Up In My Heart With A Slow Pain.

Widow. The Word Consumes Itself.

God Has To Remind Us This Isn't Heaven By A Long Shot, So He Increases The Radios And Lethal Flies.

What Did My Fingers Do Before They Held Him? What Did My Heart Do, With Its Love?

I Am Terrified By This Dark Thing That Sleeps In Me; All Day I Feel Its Soft, Feathery Turnings, Its Malignity. Clouds Pass And Disperse. Are Those The Faces Of Love, Those Pale Irretrievables? Is It For Such I Agitate My Heart? I Am Incapable Of More Knowledge. What Is This, This Face So Murderous In Its Strangle Of Branches? - Its Snaky Acids Kiss. It Petrifies The Will. These Are The Isolate, Slow Faults That Kill, That Kill, That Kill.

England Offers New Comforts. I Could Write A Novel There.

It Is Best To Meet In A Cul-de-sac, A Palace Of Velvet With Windows Of Mirrors. There One Is Safe, There Are No Family Photographs, No Rings Through The Nose, No Cries.

I Was Supposed To Be Having The Time Of My Life.

Time Of My Life

Living With Him Is Like Being Told A Perpetual Story: His Mind Is The Biggest, Most Imaginative I Have Ever Met. I Could Live In Its Growing Countries Forever.

I Must Be Lean & Write & Make Worlds Beside This To Live In.

What Is So Real As The Cry Of A Child? A Rabbit's Cry May Be Wilder But It Has No Soul.

Worse Even Than Your Maddening Song, Your Silence.

Outcast On A Cold Star, Unable To Feel Anything But An Awful Helpless Numbness. I Look Down Into The Warm, Earthy World. Into A Nest Of Lovers' Beds, Baby Cribs, Meal Tables, All The Solid Commerce Of Life In This Earth, And Feel Apart, Enclosed In A Wall Of Glass.

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.

Kiss Me And You Will See How Important I Am.

I Liked Looking On At Other People In Crucial Situations. If There Was A Road Accident Or A Street Fight Or A Baby Pickled In A Laboratory Jar For Me To Look At, I'd Stop And Look So Hard I Never Forgot It.

This Is Newness: Every Little Tawdry Obstacle Glass-wrapped And Peculiar, Glinting And Clinking In A Saint's Falsetto. Only You Don't Know What To Make Of The Sudden Slippiness, The Blind, White, Awful, Inaccessible Slant. There's No Getting Up It By The Words You Know. No Getting Up By Elephant Or Wheel Or Shoe. We Have Only Come To Look. You Are Too New To Want The World In A Glass Hat.

Now I Know What Loneliness Is, I Think. Momentary Loneliness, Anyway. It Comes From A Vague Core Of The Self - - Like A Disease Of The Blood, Dispersed Throughout The Body So That One Cannot Locate The Matrix, The Spot Of Contagion.

Your Room Is Not Your Prison. You Are.

Every Woman Adores A Fascist, The Boot In The Face, The Brute Brute Heart Of A Brute Like You.

I Lay In That Tub On The Seventeenth Floor Of This Hotel For-women-only, High Up Over The Jazz And Push Of New York, For Near Unto An Hour, And I Felt Myself Growing Pure Again. I Don't Believe In Baptism Or The Waters Of Jordan Or Anything Like That, But I Guess I Feel About A Hot Bath The Way Those Religious People Feel About Holy Water.

The Day I Went Into Physics Class It Was Death.

I Smile, Now, Thinking: We All Like To Think We Are Important Enough To Need Psychiatrists

Yes, I Was Infatuated With You: I Am Still. No One Has Ever Heightened Such A Keen Capacity Of Physical Sensation In Me. I Cut You Out Because I Couldn't Stand Being A Passing Fancy. Before I Give My Body, I Must Give My Thoughts, My Mind, My Dreams. And You Weren't Having Any Of Those.

I'm Happier Writing About Doctors Than I Would Have Been Being One.

If I Have A Dry Spell ... I Wait And Live Harder, Eyes, Ears, And Heart Open, And When The Productive Time Comes, It Is That Much Richer.

Hour By Hour, Day By Day, Life Becomes Possible.

I Want To Be Able To Sleep In An Open Field, To Travel West, To Walk Freely At Night.

I Must Bridge The Gap Between Adolescent Glitter And Mature Glow.

The Sun Gives You Ulcers, The Wind Gives You T.b. Once You Were Beautiful.

I Don't See What Women See In Other Women," I'd Told Doctor Nolan In My Interview That Noon. "what Does A Woman See In A Woman That She Can't See In A Man?" Doctor Nolan Paused. Then She Said, "tenderness.

To Learn And Think; To Think And Live; To Live And Learn: This Always, With New Insight, New Understanding, And New Love.

I Must Not Be Selfless: Develop A Sense Of Self. A Solidness That Can't Be Attacked.

I Shut My Eyes And All The World Drops Dead; I Lift My Eyes And All Is Born Again.

Please Don’t Expect Me To Always Be Good And Kind And Loving. There Are Times When I Will Be Cold And Thoughtless And Hard To Understand.

We Stayed At Home To Write, To Consolidate Our Outstretched Selves.

So, Now I Shall Talk Every Night. To Myself. To The Moon. I Shall Walk, As I Did Tonight, Jealous Of My Loneliness, In The Blue-silver Of The Cold Moon, Shining Brilliantly On The Drifts Of Fresh-fallen Snow, With The Myriad Sparkles. I Talk To Myself And Look At The Dark Trees, Blessedly Neutral. So Much Easier Than Facing People, Than Having To Look Happy, Invulnerable, Clever.

I Want, I Think, To Be Omniscient. I Think I Would Like To Call Myself "the Girl Who Wanted To Be God." Yet If I Were Not In This Body Where Would I Be-perhaps I Am Destined To Be Classified And Qualified. But, Oh, I Cry Out Against It.

I May Never Be Happy, But Tonight I Am Content. At Times Like This I'd Call Myself A Fool To Ask For More.

I Didn’t Want Any Flowers, I Only Wanted To Lie With My Hands Turned Up And Be Utterly Empty. How Free It Is, You Have No Idea How Free.

So You Got Rid Of Your Astonishment That Someone Could Write So Much More Dynamically Than You. You Stopped Cherishing Your Aloneness And Poetic Differentness To Your Delicately Flat Little Bosom. You Said: She's To Good To Forget. How About Making Her A Friend And Competitor — You Could Learn Alot From Her. So You'll Try. So Maybe She'll Laugh In Your Face. So Maybe She'll Beat You Hollow In The End. So Anyhow, You'll Try, And Maybe, Possibly, She Can Stand You. Here's Hoping!

I May Never Be Happy, But Tonight I Am Content.

I Can't Deceive Myself Out Of The Bare Stark Realization That No Matter How Enthusiastic You Are, No Matter How Sure That Character Is Fate, Nothing Is Real, Past Or Future, When You Are Alone In Your Room With The Clock Ticking Loudly Into The False Cheerful Brilliance Of The Electric Light. And If You Have No Past Or Future Which, After All, Is All That The Present Is Made Of, Why Then You May As Well Dispose Of The Empty Shell Of Present And Commit Suicide.

..i Fancied You'd Return The Way You Said, But I Grow Old And I Forget Your Name. (i Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.) I Should Have Loved A Thunderbird Instead; At Least When Spring Comes They Roar Back Again. I Shut My Eyes And All The World Drops Dead. (i Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.)

I Feel Occasionally My Skull Will Crack, Fatigue Is Continuous - I Only Go From Less Exhausted To More Exhausted & Back Again.

Your Body Hurts Me As The World Hurts God

Can A Selfish Egocentric Jealous And Unimaginative Female Write A Damn Thing Worthwhile?

Every Day One Has To Earn The Name Of 'writer' Over Again, With Much Wrestling.

I Do Not Fear It: I Have Been There.

But When I Took Up My Pen, My Hand Made Big, Jerky Letters Like Those Of A Child, And The Lines Sloped Down The Page From Left To Right Horizontally, As If They Were Loops Of String Lying On The Paper, And Someone Had Come Along And Blown Them Askew.

Frustrated? Yes. Why? Because It Is Impossible For Me To Be God — Or The Universal Woman-and-man — Or Anything Much. I Am What I Feel And Think And Do. I Want To Express My Being As Fully As I Can Because I Somewhere Picked Up The Idea That I Could Justify My Being Alive That Way.

I Wanted To Be Where Nobody I Knew Could Ever Come.

Some Pale, Hueless Flicker Of Sensitivity Is In Me. God, Must I Lose It In Cooking Scrambled Eggs For A Man.

I Want So Obviously, So Desperately To Be Loved, And To Be Capable Of Love.

Cheers For Spring; For Life; For A Growing Soul.

I Think Writers Are The Most Narcissistic People. Well, I Musn't Say This, I Like Many Of Them, A Great Many Of My Friends Are Writers.

When You Are Insane, You Are Busy Being Insane-all The Time ... When I Was Crazy, That Was All I Was.

Whenever I'm Sad I'm Going To Die, Or So Nervous I Can't Sleep, Or In Love With Somebody I Won't Be Seeing For A Week, I Slump Down Just So Far And Then I Say: 'i'll Go Take A Hot Bath.

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.

When They Asked Some Old Roman Philosopher Or Other How He Wanted To Die, He Said He Would Open His Veins In A Warm Bath. I Thought It Would Be Easy, Lying In The Tup And Seeing The Redness Flower From My Wrists, Flush After Flush Through The Clear Water, Till I Sank Into Sleep Under A Surface Gaudy As Poppies.

The Sickness Rolled Through Me In Great Waves. After Each Wave It Would Fade Away And Leave Me Limp As A Wet Leaf And Shivering All Over And Then I Would Feel It Rising Up In Me Again, And The Glittering White Torture Chamber Tiles Under My Feet And Over My Head And All Four Sides Closed In And Squeezed Me To Pieces.

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James Van Der Beek

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