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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.

-Sylvia Plath

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Some Things Are Hard

Sylvia Plath

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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.

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On The Train: Staring Hypnotized At The Blackness Outside The Window, Feeling The Incomparable Rhythmic Language Of The Wheels, Clacking Out Nursery Rhymes, Summing Up Moments Of The Mind Like The Chant Of A Broken Record: God Is Dead, God Is Dead. Going, Going, Going. And The Pure Bliss Of This, The Erotic Rocking Of The Coach. France Splits Open Like A Ripe Fig In The Mind; We Are Raping The Land, We Are Not Stopping.

August Rain: The Best Of The Summer Gone, And The New Fall Not Yet Born. The Odd Uneven Time.

I Would Catch Sight Of Some Flawless Man Off In The Distance, But As Soon As He Moved Closer I Immediately Saw He Wouldn’t Do At All.

If The Body Is A Temple, Then Tattoos Are Its Stained Glass Windows.

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

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 Has Gone Through; I Dream Of What It May Go Through.

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.

I Could Feel The Winter Shaking My Bones And Banging My Teeth Together.

Let Me Sit In A Flowerpot, The Spiders Won't Notice. My Heart Is A Stopped Geranium.

That Afternoon My Mother Had Brought Me The Roses. "save Them For My Funeral," I'd Said.

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

... 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.

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.

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

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

It Never Occurred To Me To Say No.

Then I Thought, "no, I Broke It Myself. I Broke It On Purpose To Pay Myself Back For Being Such A Heel.

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.

I Do Not Fear It: I Have Been There.

I Do Not Know Who I Am Tonight.

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.

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

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

I Thought If Only I Had A Keen, Shapely Bone Structure To My Face Or Could Discuss Politics Shrewdly Or Was A Famous Writer Constantin Might Find Me Interesting Enough To Sleep With. And Then I Wondered If As Soon As He Came To Like Me He Would Sink Into Ordinariness, And If As Soon As He Came To Love Me I Would Find Fault, The Way I Did With Buddy Willard And The Boys Before Him.

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.

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.

I Felt Wise And Cynical As All Hell.

I Need More Than Anything Right Now What Is, Of Course, Most Impossible, Someone To Love Me, To Be With Me At Night When I Wake Up In Shuddering Horror And Fear Of The Cement Tunnels Leading Down To The Shock Room, To Comfort Me With An Assurance That No Psychiatrist Can Quite Manage To Convey.

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.

Once One Has Seen God, What Is The Remedy?

If You Expect Nothing From Anybody, You’re Never Disappointed.

I Began To Think Vodka Was My Drink At Last. It Didn’t Taste Like Anything, But It Went Straight Down Into My Stomach Like A Sword Swallowers’ Sword And Made Me Feel Powerful And Godlike.

Stars Open Among The Lilies. Are You Not Blinded By Such Expressionless Sirens? This Is The Silence Of Astounded Souls.

I Hate Handing Over Money To People For Doing What I Could Just As Easily Do Myself, It Makes Me Nervous.

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.

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

People Or Stars Regard Me Sadly, I Disappoint Them.

Worse Even Than Your Maddening Song, Your Silence.

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

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

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

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

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

Aloneness And Selfness Are Too Important To Betray For Company.

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.

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?

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.

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 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 Am Inhabited By A Cry. Nightly It Flaps Out Looking, With Its Hooks, For Something To Love.

Like A Cat I Have Nine Times To Die.

It Is Awful To Want To Go Away And To Want To Go Nowhere.

The More Hopeless You Were, The Further Away They Hid You.

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

The Lyric Abstrusities Of Auden Ring Mystically Down The Circular Canals Of My Ear And It Begins To Look Like Snow. The Good Gray Conservative Obliterating Snow. Smoothing (in One White Lacy Euphemism After Another) Out All The Black Bleak Angular Unangelic Nauseous Ugliness Of The Blasted Sterile World: Dry Buds, Shrunken Stone Houses, Dead Vertical Moving People All All All Go Under The Great White Beguiling Wave. And Come Out Transformed. Lose Yourself In A Numb Dumb Snow-daubed Lattice Of Crystal And Come Out Pure With The White Virginal Veneer You Never Had.

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.

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

You Have Lost All Delight In Life. Ahead Is A Large Array Of Blind Alleys. You Are Half-deliberately, Half-desperately Cutting Off Your Grip On Creative Life. You Are Becoming A Neuter Machine. You Cannot Love, Even If You Knew How To Begin To Love. Every Thought Is A Devil, A Hell-if You Could Do A Lot Of Things Over Again, Ah, How Differently You Would Do Them! You Want To Go Home, Back To The Womb. You Watch The World Bang Door After Door In Your Face, Numbly, Bitterly. You Have Forgotten The Secret You Knew, Once, Ah, Once, Of Being Joyous, Of Laughing, Of Opening Doors.

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

I Write Only Because There Is A Voice Within Me That Will Not Be Still

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

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

I Am Still Raw. I Say I May Be Back. You Know What Lies Are For. Even In Your Zen Heaven We Shan't Meet.

I Wondered Why I Couldn't Go The Whole Way Doing What I Should Any More. This Made Me Sad And Tired. Then I Wondered Why I Couldn't Go The Whole Way Doing What I Shouldn't, The Way Doreen Did, And This Made Me Even Sadder And More Tired.

I Think That In Poetry Personal Experience Is Very Important, But Certainly It Shouldn't Be A Kind Of Shut-box And Mirror Looking, Narcissistic Experience. I Believe It Should Be Relevant, And Relevant To The Larger Things, The Bigger Things Such As Hiroshima And Dachau And So On.

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

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 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.

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

I Tried To Speak In A Cool, Calm Way, But The Zombie Rose Up In My Throat And Choked Me Off.

There Was A Beautiful Time.

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.

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

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.

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

I Deserve That, Don't I, Some Sort Of Blazing Love That I Can Live With.

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

I Think I Am Mad Sometimes.

I, Love, I Am The Pure Acetylene Virgin Attended By Roses.

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?

With Me, The Present Is Forever, And Forever Is Always Shifting, Flowing, Melting. This Second Is Life. And When It Is Gone It Is Dead. But You Can't Start Over With Each New Second. You Have To Judge By What Is Dead. It's Like Quicksand... Hopeless From The Start.

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

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

Please Let Him Come, And Give Me The Resilience & Guts To Make Him Respect Me, Be Interested, And Not To Throw Myself At Him With Loudness Or Hysterical Yelling; Calmly, Gently, Easy Baby Easy. He Is Probably Strutting The Backs Among Crocuses Now With Seven Scandinavian Mistresses. And I Sit, Spiderlike, Waiting, Here, Home; Penelope Weaving Webs Of Webster, Turning Spindles Of Tourneur. Oh, He Is Here; My Black Marauder; Oh Hungry Hungry. I Am So Hungry For A Big Smashing Creative Burgeoning Burdened Love: I Am Here; I Wait; And He Plays On The Banks Of The River Cam Like A Casual Faun.

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

I Hadn't, At The Last Moment, Felt Like Washing Off The Two Diagonal Lines Of Dried Blood That Marked My Cheeks. They Seemed Touching, And Rather Spectacular, And I Thought I Would Carry Them Around With Me, Like The Relic Of A Dead Lover, Till They Wore Off Of Their Own Accord.

I Have To Live My Life, And It Is The Only One I’ll Ever Have.

The Silence Depressed Me. It Wasn't The Silence Of Silence. It Was My Own Silence.

I Didn’t Want My Picture Taken Because I Was Going To Cry. I Didn’t Know Why I Was Going To Cry, But I Knew That If Anybody Spoke To Me Or Looked At Me Too Closely The Tears Would Fly Out Of My Eyes And The Sobs Would Fly Out Of My Throat And I’d Cry For A Week. I Could Feel The Tears Brimming And Sloshing In Me Like Water In A Glass That Is Unsteady And Too Full.

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.

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

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

I Am Afraid Of Getting Older … I Am Afraid Of Getting Married. Spare Me From Cooking Three Meals A Day—spare Me From The Relentless Cage Of Routine And Rote. I Want To Be Free…. I Want, I Want To Think, To Be Omniscient…. I Think I Would Like To Call Myself ‘the Girl Who Wanted To Be God.

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.

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.

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

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

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

A Little Thing, Like Children Putting Flowers In My Hair, Can Fill Up The Widening Cracks In My Self-assurance Like Soothing Lanolin.

If I Was Going To Fall, I Would Hang On To My Small Comforts, At Least, For As Long As I Possibly Could.

Is Anyone Anywhere Happy?

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.

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.

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.

At This Rate, I'd Be Lucky If I Wrote A Page A Day. Then I Knew What The Problem Was. I Needed Experience. How Could I Write About Life When I'd Never Had A Love Affair Or A Baby Or Even Seen Anybody Die? A Girl I Knew Had Just Won A Prize For A Short Story About Her Adventures Among The Pygmies In Africa. How Could I Compete With That Sort Of Thing?

I Opened The Door And Blinked Out Into The Bright Hall. I Had The Impression It Wasn't Night And It Wasn't Day, But Some Lurid Third Interval That Had Suddenly Slipped Between Them And Would Never End.

How Frail The Human Heart Must Be - A Mirrored Pool Of Thought.

I Love The People,' I Said. 'i Have Room In Me For Love, And For Ever So Many Little Lives.

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

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

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

She Stared At Her Reflection In The Glossed Shop Windows As If To Make Sure, Moment By Moment, That She Continued To Exist.

…'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.

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.

I Didn't Really See Why People Should Look At Me. Plenty Of People Looked Queerer Than I Did.

With That Strange Knowing That Comes Over Me, Like A Clairvoyance, I Know That I Am Sure Of Myself And My Enormous And Alarmingly Timeless Love For You; Which Will Always Be.

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.

Everything In Life Is Writable.

Yes, My Consuming Desire Is To Mingle With Road Crews, Sailors And Soldiers, Barroom Regulars - To Be A Part Of A Scene, Anonymous, Listening, Recording - All This Is Spoiled By The Fact That I Am A Girl, A Female Always Supposedly 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. Yes, God, I Want To Talk To Everybody As Deeply As I Can. I Want To Be Able To Sleep In An Open Field, To Travel West, To Walk Freely At Night.

I Dream Too Much, Work Too Little.

It Was Sometime In October; She Had Long Ago Lost Track Of All The Days And It Really Didn’t Matter Because One Was Like Another And There Were No Nights To Separate Them Because She Never Slept Any More.

Not Easy To State The Change You Made. If I'm Alive Now, I Was Dead, Though, Like A Stone, Unbothered By It.

I Collected Men With Interesting Names. I Already Knew A Socrates. He Was Tall And Ugly And Intellectual And The Son Of Some Big Greek Movie Producer In Hollywood, But Also A Catholic, Which Ruined It For Both Of Us.

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

Doing All The Little Tricky Things It Takes To Grow Up, Step By Step, Into An Anxious And Unsettling World.

I'm About Fifty Years Behind As Far As My Preferences Go And I Must Say That The Poets Who Excite Me Most Are The Americans. There Are Very Few Contemporary English Poets That I Admire.

To The Person In The Bell Jar, Blank And Stopped As A Dead Baby, The World Itself Is A Bad Dream.

The Artist's Life Nourishes Itself On The Particular, The Concrete.

Don't Let The Wicked City Get You Down.

What I Hate Is The Thought Of Being Under A Man's Thumb," I Had Told Doctor Nolan. "a Man Doesn't Have A Worry In The World, While I've Got A Baby Hanging Over My Head Like A Big Stick, To Keep Me In Line.

If They Substituted The Word 'lust' For 'love' In The Popular Songs It Would Come Nearer The Truth.

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.

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.

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

I Wondered What I Thought I Was Burying.

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

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 Find Myself Absolutely Fulfilled When I Have Written A Poem, When I'm Writing One. Having Written One, Then You Fall Away Very Rapidly From Having Been A Poet To Becoming A Sort Of Poet In Rest, Which Isn't The Same Thing At All. But I Think The Actual Experience Of Writing A Poem Is A Magnificent One.

I Saw Myself Sitting In The Crotch Of This Fig Tree, Starving To Death, Just Because I Couldn't Make Up My Mind Which Of The Figs I Would Choose. I Wanted Each And Every One Of Them, But Choosing One Meant Loosing All The Rest, And, As I Sat There, Unable To Decide, The Figs Began To Wrinkle And Go Black, And, One By One, They Plopped To The Ground At My Feet.

What A Man Wants Is A Mate And What A Woman Wants Is Infinite Security.

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 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.

I Am Made, Crudely, For Success.

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.

Can You Understand? Someone, Somewhere, Can You Understand Me A Little, Love Me A Little?

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.

I Used To Pray To Recover You.

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

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

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 Felt Overstuffed And Dull And Disappointed, The Way I Always Do The Day After Christmas, As If Whatever It Was The Pine Boughs And The Candles And The Silver And Gilt-ribboned Presents And The Birch-log Fires And The Christmas Turkey And The Carols At The Piano Promised Never Came To Pass.

All I Want Is Blackness. Blackness And Silence.

The Day I Went Into Physics Class It Was Death.

The Truth Comes To Me. The Truth Loves Me.

Love Set You Going Like A Fat Gold Watch. The Midwife Slapped Your Footsoles, And Your Bald Cry Took Its Place Among The Elements.

Nothing Is Real Except The Present, And Already, I Feel The Weight Of Centuries Smothering Me. Some Girl A Hundred Years Ago Once Lived As I Do. And She Is Dead. I Am The Present, But I Know I, Too, Will Pass. The High Moment, The Burning Flash, Come And Are Gone, Continuous Quicksand. And I Don’t Want To Die.

I Was My Own Woman. The Next Step Was To Find The Proper Sort Of Man.

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

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

But Writing Poems And Letters Doesn't Seem To Do Much Good.

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

I Had Always Imagined Myself Hitching Up On To My Elbows On The Delivery Table After It Was All Over - Dead White, Of Course, With No Makeup And From The Awful Ordeal, But Smiling And Radiant, With My Hair Down To My Waist, And Reaching Out For My First Little Squirmy Child And Saying Its Name, Whatever It Was.

I Knew You'd Decide To Be All Right Again.

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

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

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 Had Removed My Patent Leather Shoes After A While, For They Foundered Badly In The Sand. It Pleased Me To Think They Would Be Perched There On The Silver Log, Pointing Out To Sea, Like A Sort Of Soul-compass, After I Was Dead.

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.

Then I Decided I Would Spend The Summer Writing A Novel. That Would Fix A Lot Of People.

To Look At Her, You Might Not Guess That Inside She Is Laughing And Crying, At Her Own Stupidities And Luckiness, And At The Strange Enigmatic Ways Of The World Which She Will Spend Lifetime Trying To Learn And Understand.

Eternity Bores Me, I Never Wanted It.

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

And I, Stepping From This Skin Of Old Bandages, Boredoms, Old Faces Step To You From The Black Car Of Lethe, Pure As A Baby.

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.

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

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

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

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

Death May Whiten In Sun Or Out Of It.

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

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

I Shall Never Get Out Of This! There Are Two Of Me Now: This New Absolutely White Person And The Old Yellow One, And The White Person Is Certainly The Superior One. She Doesn't Need Food, She Is One Of The Real Saints. At The Beginning I Hated Her, She Had No Personality- She Lay In Bed With Me Like A Dead Body And I Was Scared, Because She Was Shaped Just The Way I Was Only Much Whiter And Unbreakable And With No Complaints. I Couldn't Sleep For A Week She Was So Cold.

So I Kiss Him, And There Is The Great Dark Sea Ahead.

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 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 Is So Real As The Cry Of A Child?

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

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

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.

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

God, If Ever I Have Come Close To Wanting To Commit Suicide, It Is Now, With The Groggy Sleepless Blood Dragging Through My Veins, And The Air Thick And Gray With Rain ... I Fell Into Bed Again This Morning, Begging For Sleep, Withdrawing Into The Dark, Warm, Fetid Escape From Action, From Responsibility. No Good.

Widow. The Word Consumes Itself.

I Saw The Years Of My Life Spaced Along A Road In The Form Of Telephone Poles Threaded Together By Wires. I Counted One, Two, Three... Nineteen Telephone Poles, And Then The Wires Dangled Into Space, And Try As I Would, I Couldn't See A Single Pole Beyond The Nineteenth.

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

Although, I Admit, I Desire, Occasionally, Some Backtalk From The Mute Sky, I Can't Honestly Complain: A Certain Minor Light May Still Lean Incandescent Out Of Kitchen Table Or Chair As If A Celestial Burning Took Possession Of The Most Obtuse Objects Now And Then --

Winter Dawn Is The Color Of Metal, The Trees Stiffen Into Place Like Burnt Nerves.

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

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

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