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My Best Friends When I Was Young Were Always Doctors. I Used To Dress Up In A White Gauze Helmet And Go Round And See Babies Born And Cadavers Cut Open. This Fascinated Me, But I Could Never Bring Myself To Disciplining Myself To The Point Where I Could Learn All The Details That One Has To Learn To Be A Good Doctor. This Is The Sort Of Opposition: Somebody Who Deals Directly With Human Experiences, Is Able To Cure, To Mend, To Help, This Sort Of Thing.

-Sylvia Plath

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My Best Friends When

Sylvia Plath

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My Best Friends When I Was Young Were Always Doctors. I Used To Dress Up In A White Gauze Helmet And Go Round And See Babies Born And Cadavers Cut Open. This Fascinated Me, But I Could Never Bring Myself To Disciplining Myself To The Point Where I Could Learn All The Details That One Has To Learn To Be A Good Doctor. This Is The Sort Of Opposition: Somebody Who Deals Directly With Human Experiences, Is Able To Cure, To Mend, To Help, This Sort Of Thing.

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I Am Silver And Exact.i Have No Preconceptions.

But I Am I Now; And So Many Other Millions Are So Irretrievably Their Own Special Variety Of 'i' That I Can Hardly Bear To Think Of It. I: How Firm A Letter; How Reassuring The Three Strokes: One Vertical, Proud And Assertive, And Then The Two Short Horizontal Lines In Quick, Smug Succession. The Pen Scratching On The Paper…i…i…i…i…i…i.

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

The Night Sky Is Only A Sort Of Carbon Paper, Blueblack, With The Much-poked Periods Of Stars Letting In The Light, Peephole After Peephole--- A Bonewhite Light, Like Death, Behind All Things.

The Door Of The Novel, Like The Door Of The Poem, Also Shuts. But Not So Fast, Nor With Such Manic, Unanswerable Finality.

Doreen Had Intuition. Everything She Said Was Like A Secret Voice Speaking Straight Out Of My Own Bones.

I Have A Violence In Me That Is Hot As Death-blood.

A Skeptic, I Would Ask For Consistency First Of All.

I Am Accused. I Dream Of Massacres. I Am A Garden Of Black And Red Agonies. I Drink Them, Hating Myself, Hating And Fearing. And Now The World Conceives Its End And Runs Toward It, Arms Held Out In Love.

When You Give Someone Your Whole Heart And He Doesn't Want It, You Cannot Take It Back. It's Gone Forever.

Unrequited Love

Yes, There Is Joy, Fulfillment And Companionship But The Loneliness Of The Soul In Its Appalling Self-consciousness Is Horrible And Overpowering.

And, I Think: I Am But One More Drop In The Great Sea Of Matter, Defined, With The Ability To Realize My Existence. Of The Millions, I, Too, Was Potentially Everything At Birth. I, Too, Was Stunted, Narrowed, Warped, By My Environment, My Outcroppings Of Heredity. I, Too, Will Find A Set Of Beliefs, Of Standards To Live By, Yet The Very Satisfaction Of Finding Them Will Be Marred By The Fact That I Have Reached The Ultimate In Shallow, Two-dimensional Living — A Set Of Values.

If There's Anything I Look Down On, It's A Man In A Blue Outfit.

Spiderlike, I Spin Mirrors, Loyal To My Image.

I May Have Made A Straight A In Physics, But I Was Panic-struck. Physics Made Me Sick The Whole Time I Learned It.

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.

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

A Psychiatrist Is The God Of Our Age. But They Cost Money.

Do I Like To Write? Why? About What? Will I Give Up And Say, "living And Feeding A Man's Insatiable Guts And Begetting Children Occupies My Whole Life. Don't Have Time To Write"?

I Am So Hungry For A Big Smashing Creative Burgeoning Burdened Love.

I Have Been Holding A Dialogue With Myself And Girding Myself To Stand Fast Without Running.

…beating Time Along The Edge Of Thought.

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

But I Wasn't Sure. I Wasn't Sure At All. How Did I Know That Someday―at College, In Europe, Somewhere, Anywhere―the Bell Jar, With Its Stifling Distortions, Wouldn't Descend Again?

If Doctor Nolan Asked Me For The Matches, I Would Say That I'd Thought They Were Made Of Candy And Had Eaten Them.

It Won't Happen Yet, Ellen Mused, Mashing Cooked Carrots For Jill's Lunch. Breakups Seldom Do. It Will Unfold Slowly, One Little Tell-tale Symptom After Another Like Some Awful, Hellish Flower.

I Can't Be Satisfied With The Colossal Job Of Merely Living.

Some Things Are Hard To Write About. After Something Happens To You, You Go To Write It Down, And Either You Over Dramatize It, Or Underplay It, Exaggerate The Wrong Parts Or Ignore The Important Ones. At Any Rate, You Never Write It Quite The Way You Want To.

I Am Sure There Are Things That Can't Be Cured By A Good Bath But I Can't Think Of One.

...we Shall Board Our Imagined Ship And Wildly Sail Among Sacred Islands Of The Mad Till Death Shatters The Fabulous Stars And Makes Us Real.

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

If You Dissect A Bird / To Diagram The Tongue, / You'll Cut The Chord / Articulating Song.

Life Was Not To Be Sitting In Hot Amorphic Leisure In My Backyard Idly Writing Or Not Writing, As The Spirit Moved Me. It Was, Instead, Running Madly, In A Crowded Schedule, In A Squirrel Cage Of Busy People. Working, Living, Dancing, Dreaming, Talking, Kissing- Singing, Laughing, Learning.

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.

Nothing Stinks Like A Pile Of Unpublished Writing, Which Remark I Guess Shows I Still Don't Have A Pure Motive (o It's-such-fun-i-just-can't-stop-who-cares-if-it's-published-or-read) About Writing.

Well, I Know Now. I Know A Little More How Much A Simple Thing Like A Snowfall Can Mean To A Person

Now I Am Silent, Hate Up To My Neck, Thick, Thick. I Do Not Speak.

I Wonder Why I Don't Go To Bed And Go To Sleep. But Then It Would Be Tomorrow, So I Decide That No Matter How Tired, No Matter How Incoherent I Am, I Can Skip On Hour More Of Sleep And Live.

It Was My Last Act Of Love (first Words To Her Mother In The Hospital After Her First Major Suicide Attempt)

The Lawn Was White With Doctors

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

I Guess They Call It Suicide, But I'm To Full To Swallow My Pride I Can't Stand Losing You The Police Dying Is An Art, Like Everything Else. I Do It Exceptionally Well.

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

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.

Joy:show Joy & Enjoy: Then Others Will Be Joyful.

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

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

Even Amidst Fierce Flames The Golden Lotus Can Be Planted.

The Moon Has Nothing To Be Sad About, Staring From Her Hood Of Bone. She Is Used To This Sort Of Thing. Her Blacks Crackle And Drag.

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.

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

Mother Of Otherness, Eat Me.

My Life Is A Discipline, A Prison: I Live For My Own Work, Without Which I Am Nothing.

Go Out And Do Something. It Isn’t Your Room That’s A Prison, It’s Yourself.

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.

The Day I Went Into Physics Class It Was Death.

The Floor Seemed Wonderfully Solid. It Was Comforting To Know I Had Fallen And Could Fall No Farther.

O Heart, Such Disorganization!

Disorganization

I Don't Know How Long I Kept At It... I Felt Reasonably Safe, Streched Out On The Floor, And Lay Quite Still. It Didn't Seem To Be Summer Any More

I Wish You’d Find The Exit Out Of My Head.

At Twenty I Tried To Die And Get Back, Back, Back To You. I Thought Even The Bones Would Do.

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

And There's The Fallacy Of Existence: The Idea That One Could Be Happy Forever And Age With A Given Situation Or Series Of Accomplishments.

The Moon, Too, Abases Her Subjects, But In The Daytime She Is Ridiculous. Your Dissatisfactions, On The Other Hand, Arrive Through The Mailslot With Loving Regularity, White And Blank, Expansive As Carbon Monoxide. No Day Is Safe From News Of You, Walking About In Africa Maybe, But Thinking Of Me.

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

Why Can’t I Try On Different Lives, Like Dresses, To See Which Fits Best And Is More Becoming?

I've Got To Have Something. I Want To Stop It All, The Whole Monumental Grotesque Joke, Before It's Too Late. But Writing Poems And Letters Doesn't Seem To Do Much Good.

I Had Hoped, At My Departure, I Would Feel Sure And Knowledgeable About Everything That Lay Ahead -- After All, I Had Been "analyzed." Instead, All I Could See Were Question Marks.

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

The Moon, Also, Is Merciless: She Would Drag Me Cruelly, Being Barren. Her Radiance Scathes Me. Or Perhaps I Have Caught Her.

I Am What I Feel And Think And Do.

For Me, Poetry Is An Evasion Of The Real Job Of Writing Prose.

I Had Imagined A Kind, Ugly, Intuitive Man Looking Up And Say, 'ah!' In An Encouraging Way, As If He Could See Something I Couldn't, And Then I Would Find Words To Tell Him How I Was So Scared, As If I Were Being Stuffed Farther And Farther Into A Black, Airless Sack With No Way Out.

I Love Life. But It Is Hard And I Have So Much, So Very Much To Learn.

Because Wherever I Sat—on The Deck Of A Ship Or At A Street Café In Paris Or Bangkok—i Would Be Sitting Under The Same Glass Bell Jar, Stewing In My Own Sour Air.

As A Poet I Would Say Everything Should Be Able To Come Into A Poem But I Can't Put Toothbrushes In A Poem. I Really Can't.

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

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

So Much Working, Reading, Thinking, Living To Do! A Lifetime Is Not Long Enough.

So Much Working, Reading, Thinking, Living To Do. A Lifetime Is Not Long Enough. Nor Youth To Old Age Long Enough. Immortality And Permanence Be Damned. Sure I Want Them, But They Are Nonexistent, And Won't Matter When I Rot Underground. All I Want To Say Is: I Made The Best Of A Mediocre Job. It Was A Good Fight While It Lasted. And So Life Goes.

I Am Afraid Of Getting Married. Spare Me From Cooking Three Meals A Dayspare Me From The Relentless Cage Of Routine And Rote.

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

Masks Are The Order Of The Day - And The Least I Can Do Is Cultivate The Illusion That I Am Gay, Serene, Not Hollow And Afraid.

I Started Adding Up All The Things I Couldn't Do.

What Horrifies Me Most Is The Idea Of Being Useless: Well-educated, Brilliantly Promising, And Fading Out Into An Indifferent Middle Age.

I Woke To The Sound Of Rain.

I Need Not To Be More With Others, But To Be More & More Deeply, Richly Alone. Recreating Worlds.

All The Heat And Fear Had Purged Itself. I Felt Surprisingly At Peace. The Bell Jar Hung Suspended A Few Feet Above My Head. I Was Open To The Circulating Air.

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.

…'it Always Has To End, Doesn't It? We Always Have To Separate.' 'yes,' I Said. He Was Insistent, 'but It Doesn't Always Have To Be That Way. We Could Be Together Some Day For Always.' 'oh, No,' I Told Him, Wondering If He Knew It Was All Over. 'we Keep Running Till We Die. We Separate, Get Further Apart, Till We Are Dead.

You've Only Got So Long To Live.

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.

What Is So Real As The Cry Of A Child?

Cold Glass, How You Insert Yourself Between Myself And Myself. I Scratch Like A Cat. The Blood That Runs Is Dark Fruit- An Effect, A Cosmetic. You Smile. No, It Is Not Fatal.

A Ring Of Gold With The Sun In It? Lies. Lies And A Grief.

I Sank Back In The Gray, Plush Seat And Closed My Eyes. The Air Of The Bell Jar Wadded Round Me And I Couldn't Stir.

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

I Am Sending Back The Key That Let Me Into Bluebeard's Study; Because He Would Make Love To Me I Am Sending Back The Key; In His Eye's Darkroom I Can See My X-rayed Heart, Dissected Body: I Am Sending Back The Key That Let Me Into Bluebeard S Study.

As From A Star I Saw, Coldly And Soberly, The Separateness Of Everything. I Felt The Wall Of My Skin; I Am I. That Stone Is A Stone. My Beautiful Fusion With The Things Of This World Was Over.

I Do Not Want A Plain Box, I Want A Sarcophagus With Tigery Stripes, And A Face On It Round As The Moon, To Stare Up. I Want To Be Looking At Them When They Come Picking Among The Dumb Minerals, The Roots. I See Them Already-the Pale, Star-distance Faces. Now They Are Nothing, They Are Not Even Babies. I Imagine Them Without Fathers Or Mothers, Like The First Gods. They Will Wonder If I Was Important.

Slowly, Slowly, Catch The Monkey.

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.

A Dispassionate White Sun Shone At The Summit Of The Sky. I Wanted To Hone Myself On It Till I Grew Saintly And Thin And Essential As The Blade Of A Knife.

All I Want Is Blackness. Blackness And Silence.

But When It Came Right Down To It, The Skin Of My Wrist Looked So White And Defensless That I Couldn't Do It. It Was As If What I Wanted To Kill Wasn't In That Skin Or The Thin Blue Pulse That Jumped Under My Thumb, But Somewhere Else, Deeper, More Secret, And A Whole Lot Harder To Get.

Sunday-the Doctor's Paradise! Doctors At Country Clubs, Doctors At The Seaside, Doctors With Mistresses, Doctors With Wives, Doctors In Church, Doctors In Yachts, Doctors Everywhere Resolutely Being People, Not Doctors.

I Don't See,' I Said, 'how People Stand Being Old. Your Insides All Dry Up. When You're Young You're So Self-reliant. You Don't Even Need Much Religion.

Wear Your Heart On Your Skin In This Life.

I Felt Dull And Flat And Full Of Shattered Visions.

The First Time I Saw A Fingerbowl Was At The Home Of My Benefactress. [...] The Water Had A Few Cherry Blossoms In It, And I Thought It Must Be Some Clear Sort Of Japanese After-dinner Soup And Ate Every Bit Of It, Including The Crisp Little Blossoms.

If Only I Knew What I Wanted I Could Try To See About Getting It.

Worse Even Than Your Maddening Song, Your Silence.

I Know The Bottom, She Says. I Know It With My Great Tap Root: It Is What You Fear. I Do Not Fear It: I Have Been There.

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.

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

Remember, Remember, This Is Now, And Now, And Now. Live It, Feel It, Cling To It. I Want To Become Acutely Aware Of All I’ve Taken For Granted.

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

I Thought It Sounded Just Like The Sort Of Drug A Man Would Invent. Here Was A Woman In Terrible Pain, Obviously Feeling Every Bit Of It Or She Wouldn't Groan Like That, And She Would Go Straight Home And Start Another Baby, Because The Drug Would Make Her Forget How Bad The Pain Had Been, When All The Time, In Some Secret Part Of Her, That Long, Blind, Doorless And Windowless Corridor Or Pain Was Waiting To Open Up And Shut Her In Again.

Secretly, In Studies And Attics And Schoolrooms All Over America, People Must Be Writing.

The Tulips Are Too Red...they Hurt Me.

Clouds Pass And Disperse. Are Those The Faces Of Love, Those Pale Irretrievables? Is It For Such I Agitate My Heart?

Ironically, Henry James' Biography Comforts Me & I Long To Make Known To Him His Posthumous Reputation He Wrote, In Pain, Gave All His Life (which Is More Than I Could Think Of Doing I Have Ted, Will Have Children But Few Friends) & The Critics Insulted & Mocked Him, Readers Didn't Read Him.

I Am Gone Quite Mad With The Knowledge Of Accepting The Overwhelming Number Of Things I Can Never Know, Places I Can Never Go, And People I Can Never Be.

What Do You Have In Mind After You Graduate?" What I Always Thought I Had In Mind Was Getting Some Big Scholarship To Graduate School Or A Grant To Study All Over Europe, And Then I Thought I'd Be A Professor And Write Books Of Poems Or Write Books Of Poems And Be An Editor Of Some Sort. Usually I Had These Plans On The Tip Of My Tongue. "i Don't Really Know," I Heard Myself Say. I Felt A Deep Shock, Hearing Myself Say That, Because The Minute I Said It, I Knew It Was True.

Miracles Occur, If You Dare To Call Those Spasmodic Tricks Of Radiance Miracles. The Wait's Begun Again, The Long Wait For The Angel, For That Rare, Random Descent.

The Only Reason I Remembered This Play Was Because It Had A Mad Person In It, And Everything I Had Ever Read About Mad People Stuck In My Mind, While Everything Else Flew Out.

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

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.

I Have No Preconceptions. Whatever I See, I Swallow Immediately. Just As It Is, Unmisted By Love Or Dislike. I Am Not Cruel, Only Truthful.

... You Looked Around And Saw Everybody Either Married Or Busy And Happy And Thinking And Being Creative, And You Felt Scared, Sick, Lethargic, Worst Of All, Not Wanting To Cope. You Saw Visions Of Yourself In A Straightjacket, And A Drain On The Family, Murdering Your Mother In Actuality, Killing The Edifice Of Love And Respect Built Up Over The Years In The Hearts Of Other People.

Last Year A Friend Went Dark In A Nervous City Alone, The Sea Flashing Against His Glasses, The Sea Sorted Out At Last In His Inner Ear So He Could Leave This World As He'd Entered It Through The Undependable Irrational Influence Of Water. -kevin Jeffery Clark It Was As If What I Wanted To Kill Wasn't In That Skin Or The Thin Blue Pulse That Jumped Under My Thumb, But Somewhere Else, Deeper, More Secret, And A Whole Lot Harder To Get At.

O Love, How Did You Get Here?

I May Never Be Happy, But Tonight I Am Content. Nothing More Than An Empty House, The Warm Hazy Weariness From A Day Spent Setting Strawberry Runners In The Sun, A Glass Of Cool Sweet Milk, And A Shallow Dish Of Blueberries Bathed In Cream. When One Is So Tired At The End Of A Day One Must Sleep, And At The Next Dawn There Are More Strawberry Runners To Set, And So One Goes On Living, Near The Earth. At Times Like This I'd Call Myself A Fool To Ask For More.

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

I Inhabit The Wax Image Of Myself, A Doll's Body. Sickness Begins Here; I Am A Dartboard For Witches.

Everything In Life Is Writable.

I Am Too Pure For You Or Anyone.

The Reason I Haven't Been Writing In This Book For So Long Is Partly That I Haven't Had One Decent Coherent Thought To Put Down.

I Felt The First Man I Slept With Must Be Intelligent, So I Could Respect Him.

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

I Need The Reality Of Other People, Work, To Fulfill Myself. Must Never Become A Mere Mother And Housewife.

We Walk The Plank With Strangers.

The Silence Drew Off, Baring The Pebbles And Shells And All The Tatty Wreckage Of My Life.

I Get Into A Rut, Unable To Yank My Mind Out Of It.

There Is A Certain Unique And Strange Delight About Walking Down An Empty Street Alone.

If I Didn't Think, I'd Be Much Happier; If I Didn't Have Any Sex Organs, I Wouldn't Waver On The Brink Of Nervous Emotion And Tears All The Time.

There Is A Certain Unique And Strange Delight About Walking Down An Empty Street Alone. There Is An Off-focus Light Cast By The Moon, And The Streetlights Are Part Of The Spotlight Apparatus On A Bare Stage Set Up For You To Walk Through. You Get A Feeling Of Being Listened To, So You Talk Aloud, Softly, To See How It Sounds.

I Am Not Cruel, Only Truthful.

I Think I Am Worthwhile Just Because I Have Optical Nerves And Can Try To Put Down What They Perceive. What A Fool!

Your Body Hurts Me As The World Hurts God

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.

God, It Was Good To Let Go, Let The Tight Mask Fall Off, And The Bewildered, Chaotic Fragments Pour Out. It Was The Purge, The Catharsis.

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?

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

I Have Suffered The Atrocity Of Sunsets.

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.

Please, I Want So Badly For The Good Things To Happen.

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.

Writing, Then, Was A Substitute For Myself: If You Don't Love Me, Love My Writing & Love Me For My Writing. It Is Also Much More: A Way Of Ordering And Reordering The Chaos Of Experience.

Hurl Yourself At Goals Above Your Head And Bear The Lacerations That Come When You Slip And Make A Fool Of Yourself. Try Always, As Long As You Have Breath In Your Body, To Take The Hard Way–and Work, Work, Work To Build Yourself Into A Rich, Continually Evolving Entity.

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

The Abstract Kills, The Concrete Saves.

Not Being Perfect Hurts.

Not Being Perfect

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

Shocking Things

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.

I Suppose I'll Always Be Over-vulnerable, Slightly Paranoid.

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.

You Ask Me Why I Spend My Life Writing? Do I Find Entertainment? Is It Worthwhile? Above All, Does It Pay? If Not, Then, Is There A Reason?... I Write Only Because There Is A Voice Within Me. That Will Not Be Still.

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.

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 Life. And I Am Horribly Limited.

Famous Inspirational

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.

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!

Perhaps You Considered Yourself An Oracle, Mouthpiece Of The Dead, Or Of Some God Or Other. Thirty Years Now I Have Labored To Dredge The Silt From Your Throat. I Am None The Wiser.

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, To You, Am Lost In The Gorgeous Errors Of Flesh.

And I A Smiling Woman. I Am Only Thirty. And Like The Cat I Have Nine Times To Die.

What I Want Back Is What I Was Before The Bed, Before The Knife, Before The Brooch-pin And The Salve Fixed Me In This Parenthesis; Horses Fluent In The Wind, A Place, A Time Gone Out Of Mind.

Why Honey, Don't You Want To Get Dressed?" My Mother Took Care Never To Tell Me To Do Anything. She Would Only Reason With Me Sweetly, Like One Intelligent, Mature Person With Another. It's Almost Three In The Afternoon." I'm Writing A Novel," I Said. "i Haven't Got Time To Change Into This And Change Into That.

There Must Be Quite A Few Things That A Hot Bath Won't Cure, But I Don't Know Many Of Them.

The Silence Between Us Was So Profound I Thought Part Of It Must Be My Fault.

I Shut My Eyes And All The World Drops Dead; I Lift My Lids And All Is Born Again. (i Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.) The Stars Go Waltzing Out In Blue And Red, And Arbitrary Blackness Gallops In: I Shut My Eyes And All The World Drops Dead. I Dreamed That You Bewitched Me Into Bed And Sung Me Moon-struck, Kissed Me Quite Insane. (i Think I Made You Up Inside My Head.)

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

I Want To Taste And Glory In Each Day, And Never Be Afraid To Experience Pain; And Never Shut Myself Up In A Numb Core Of Nonfeeling, Or Stop Questioning And Criticizing Life And Take The Easy Way Out. To Learn And Think: To Think And Live; To Live And Learn: This Always, With New Insight, New Understanding, And New Love.

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.

Talking About My Fears To Others Feeds It.

Look At That Ugly Dead Mask Here And Do Not Forget It. It Is A Chalk Mask With Dead Dry Poison Behind It, Like The Death Angel. It Is What I Was This Fall, And What I Never Want To Be Again. The Pouting Disconsolate Mouth, The Flat, Bored, Numb, Expressionless Eyes: Symptoms Of The Foul Decay Within.

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

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

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.

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 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.

Perhaps Some Day I'll Crawl Back Home, Beaten, Defeated. But Not As Long As I Can Make Stories Out Of My Heartbreak, Beauty Out Of Sorrow.

Love Is A Shadow. How You Lie And Cry After It

I Saw The Days Of The Year Stretching Ahead Like A Series Of Bright, White Boxes, And Separating One Box From Another Was Sleep, Like A Black Shade. Only For Me, The Long Perspective Of Shades That Set Off One Box From The Next Day Had Suddenly Snapped Up, And I Could See Day After Day After Day Glaring Ahead Of Me Like A White, Broad, Infinitely Desolate Avenue.

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.

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

Death May Whiten In Sun Or Out Of It.

I Collect Men With Interesting Names.

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Josephine Baker

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