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

-Sylvia Plath

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Then I Decided I

Sylvia Plath

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

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I Felt Like A Racehorse In A World Without Racetracks.

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

I've Eaten A Bag Of Green Apples. Boarded The Train, There's No Getting Off

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.

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.

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.

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 Need Some Older, Wiser Being To Cry To. I Talk To God, But The Sky Is Empty, And Orion Walks By And Doesn't Speak.

O Heart, Such Disorganization!

Disorganization

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

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 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.

It's A Hell Of A Responsibility To Be Yourself. It's Much Easier To Be Somebody Else Or Nobody At All.

You Are A Dream; I Hope I Never Meet You.

I Wish To Cry. Yet, I Laugh, And My Lipstick Leaves A Red Stain Like A Bloody Crescent Moon On Top Of The Beer Can

And What Is Happy? It Is A Going Always On. There Is Something Better To Be Done Than I Have Done, And Spurred By The Fair Delusion Of Progress, I Will Seek To Progress, To Whip Myself On, To More And More- To Learning. Always.

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

A Bad Dream.to The Person In The Bell Jar, Blank And Stopped As A Dead Baby, The World Itself Is The Bad Dream.a Bad Dream.i Remembered Everything.i Remembered The Cadavers And Doreen And The Story Of The Fig-tree And Marco's Diamond And The Sailor On The Common And Doctor Gordon's Wall-eyed Nurse And The Broken Thermometers And The Negro With His Two Kinds Of Beans And The Twenty Pounds I Gained On Insulin And The Rock That Bulged Between Sky And Sea Like A Grey Skull.maybe Forgetfulness, Like A Kind Snow, Should Numb And Cover Them.but They Were Part Of Me. They Were My Landscape

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

Tomorrow Is Another Day Toward Death.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

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

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 Am I-i Am Powerful, But To What Extent? I Am I.

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.

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

I Would Say Everything Should Be Able To Come Into A Poem, But I Can't Put Toothbrushes Into A Poem, I Really Can't!

The Blood Jet Is Poetry And There Is No Stopping It.

I Think I May Well Be A Jew.

Opinions Are Like Orgasms...mine Matters Most And I Really Don't Care If You Have One.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Let Me Live, Love And Say It Well In Good Sentences.

What Did My Arms Do Before They Held You?

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 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.

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.

I Talk To God But The Sky Is Empty.

I Dream Too Much, Work Too Little.

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

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.

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.

I Am Terrified By This Dark Thing That Sleeps In Me; All Day I Feel Its Soft, Feathery Turnings, Its Malignity.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Your Room Is Not Your Prison. You Are.

Let's Face It: I'm Scared, Scared And Frozen. First, I Guess, I'm Afraid For Myself...the Old Primitive Urge For Survival. It's Getting So I Live Every Moment With Terrible Intensity.

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

How We Need Another Soul To Cling To, Another Body To Keep Us Warm. To Rest And Trust; To Give Your Soul In Confidence: I Need This, I Need Someone To Pour Myself Into.

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 Desire The Things That Will Destroy Me In The End.

There Is Nothing Like Puking With Somebody To Make You Into Old Friends.

Funny Best Friend

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.

Perfection Is Terrible, It Cannot Have Children.

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

We Walk The Plank With Strangers.

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.

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

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

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.

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 --

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

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.

I Lean To You, Numb As A Fossil. Tell Me I'm Here.

There Is More Than One Good Way To Drown.

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

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.

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.

The Trouble Was, I Had Been Inadequate All Along, I Simply Hadn't Thought About It.

The Day I Went Into Physics Class It Was Death.

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

I Have Let Things Slip, A Thirty-year~old Cargo Boat Stubbornly Hanging On To My Name And Address.

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

What Have I Eaten? Lies And Smiles.

God, But Life Is Loneliness, Despite All The Opiates, Despite The Shrill Tinsel Gaiety Of "parties" With No Purpose, Despite The False Grinning Faces We All Wear. 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. Yes, There Is Joy, Fulfillment And Companionship - But The Loneliness Of The Soul In Its Appalling Self-consciousness Is Horrible And Overpowering.

Let's Face It: I'm Scared, Scared And Frozen. First, I Guess, I'm Afraid For Myself ... The Old Primitive Urge For Survival. It's Getting So I Live Every Moment With Terrible Intensity. Last Night, Driving Back From Boston, I Lay Back In The Car And Let The Colored Lights Come At Me, The Music From The Radio, The Reflection Of The Guy Driving. It All Flowed Over Me With A Screaming Ache Of Pain ... 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. When You Feel That This May Be The Good-bye, The Last Time, It Hits You Harder.

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

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

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

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

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.

I Cut You Out Because I Couldn't Stand Being A Passing Fancy.

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.

As A Poet, One Lives A Bit On Air. I Always Like Someone Who Can Teach Me Something Practical.

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.

Over Coffee And Orange Juice The Embryonic Suicide Brightens Visibly.

I Could Never Be A Complete Scholar Or A Complete Housewife Ora Completewriter: Imustcombinea Little Of All, And Thereby Be Imperfect In All.

There Ought, I Thought, To Be A Ritual For Being Born Twice - Patched, Retreaded And Approved For The Road.

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 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.

Happy! That Is Indefinable As Far As States Of Being Go.

Like A Cat I Have Nine Times To Die.

I Cannot Life For Life Itself: But For The Words Which Stay The Flux. My Life, I Feel, Will Not Be Lived Until There Are Books And Stories Which Relive It Perpetually In Time. I Forget Too Easily How It Was, And Shrink To The Horror Of The Here And Now, With No Past And No Future. Writing Breaks Open The Vaults Of The Dead And The Skies Behind Which The Prophesying Angels Hide. The Mind Makes And Makes, Spinning Its Web.

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.

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

Oh, Something Is There, Waiting For Me. Perhaps Someday The Revelation Will Burst In Upon Me And I Will See The Other Side Of This Monumental Grotesque Joke. And Then I'll Laugh. And Then I'll Know What Life Is.

I Felt Wise And Cynical As All Hell.

But Life Is Long. And It Is The Long Run That Balances The Short Flare Of Interest And Passion.

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

When I Was Nineteen, Pureness Was The Great Issue. Instead Of The World Being Divided Up Into Catholics And Protestants Or Republicans And Democrats Or White Men And Black Men Or Even Men And Women, I Saw The World Divided Into People Who Had Slept With Somebody And People Who Hadn’t, And This Seemed The Only Really Significant Difference Between One Person And Another.

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 Didn't Know What I Was Doing In New York.

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

I Believe That One Should Be Able To Control And Manipulate Experiences, Even The Most Terrific, Like Madness, Being Tortured, This Sort Of Experience, And One Should Be Able To Manipulate These Experiences With An Informed And An Intelligent Mini.

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'm Doped And Thick From My Last Sleeping Pill.

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

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.

Backward We Traveled To Reclaim The Day Before We Fell, Like Icarus, Undone; All We Find Are Altars In Decay And Profane Words Scrawled Black Across The Sun.

I Like You, But Not Too Much. I Don’t Want To Like Anybody Too Much.

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.

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.

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

I Collect Men With Interesting Names.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Very Depressed Today. Unable To Write A Thing. Menacing Gods. I Feel Outcast On A Cold Star, Unable To Feel Anything But An Awful Helpless Numbness.

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.

I Am Not Cruel, Only Truthful.

Slowly, Slowly, Catch The Monkey.

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 Do Feel That Now And I Feel That This Development Of Recording Poems, Of Speaking Poems At Readings, Of Having Records Of Poets, I Think This Is A Wonderful Thing. I'm Very Excited By It. In A Sense, There's A Return, Isn't There, To The Old Role Of The Poet, Which Was To Speak To A Group Of People, To Come Across.

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 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 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.

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

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

In A Rabbit-fear I May Hurl Myself Under The Wheels Of The Car Because The Lights Terrify Me, And Under The Dark Blind Death Of Wheels I Will Be Safe. I Am Very Tired, Very Banal, Very Confused. I Do Not Know Who I Am Tonight. I Wanted To Walk Until I Dropped And Not Complete The Inevitable Circle Of Coming Home.

All I Want Is Blackness. Blackness And Silence.

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.

I Am Still So Naïve; I Know Pretty Much What I Like And Dislike; But Please, Don’t Ask Me Who I Am. A Passionate, Fragmentary Girl, Maybe?

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.

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

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

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

Ash, Ash —- You Poke And Stir. Flesh, Bone, There Is Nothing There—— A Cake Of Soap, A Wedding Ring, A Gold Filling. Herr God, Herr Lucifer Beware Beware. Out Of The Ash I Rise With My Red Hair And I Eat Men Like Air.

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.

Feel Oddly Barren. My Sickness Is When Words Draw In Their Horns And The Physical World Refuses To Be Ordered, Recreated, Arranged And Selected. I Am A Victim Of It Then, Not A Master.

I Feel That Very Strongly: Having Been An Academic, Having Been Tempted By The Invitation To Stay On To Become A Ph.d., A Professor, And All That, One Side Of Me Certainly Does Respect All Disciplines, As Long As They Don't Ossify.

If The Moon Smiled, She Would Resemble You. You Leave The Same Impression Of Something Beautiful, But Annihilating.

I Hurl My Heart To Halt His Pace.

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?

Don't Talk To Me About The World Needing Cheerful Stuff! What The Person Out Of Belsen Physical Or Psychological Wants Is Nobody Saying The Birdies Still Go Tweet-tweet, But The Full Knowledge That Somebody Else Has Been There And Knows The Worst, Just What It Is Like.

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

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.

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

I Do Not Know Who I Am Tonight.

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.

There Is No Life Higher Than The Grasstops

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

But They Know. They All Know. And What Am I Against So Many…?

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.

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.

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.

What I Cannot Forgive Is Dishonesty - And No Matter What, Or How Hard, I Would Rather Know The Truth Of Which I Today Had Such A Clear & Devastating Vision From His Mouth Than Hear Foul Evasions, Blurrings And Rattiness.

From The Night Buddy Willard Kissed Me And Said I Must Go Out With A Lot Of Boys, He Made Me Feel I Was Much More Sexy And Experienced Than He Was And That Everything He Did Like Hugging And Kissing And Petting Was Simply What I Made Him Feel Like Doing Out Of The Blue, He Couldn’t Help It And Didn’t Know How It Came About. Now I Saw He Had Only Been Pretending All This Time To Be So Innocent.

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.

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

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 Find That In A Novel I Can Get More Of Life, Perhaps Not Such Intense Life, But Certainly More Of Life Than In Poetry.

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

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

I Felt The Mask Crumple, The Great Poisonous Store Of Corrosive Ashes Begin To Spew Out Of My Mouth.

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

* To Know A Lot Of People I Love Pieces Of, And To Want To Synthesize Those Pieces In Me Somehow, Be It By Painting Or Writing. * To Know That Millions Of Others Are Unhappy And That Life Is A Gentleman's Agreement To Grin And Paint Your Face Gay So Others Will Feel They Are Silly To Be Unhappy, And Try To Catch The Contagion Of Joy, While Inside So Many Are Dying Of Bitterness And Unfulfillment.

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.

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.

Widow. The Word Consumes Itself.

Love, Love, I Have Hung Our Cave With Roses.

The Sheets Grow Heavy As A Lecher's Kiss.

I'm Never Going To Get Married." "you're Crazy." Buddy Brightened. "you'll Change Your Mind." "no. My Mind's Made Up.

I Thought How Strange It Had Never Occurred To Me Before That I Was Only Purely Happy Until I Was Nine Years Old.

Every Day Is Precious And I Feel Infinitely Sad At This Time Melting Away From Me.

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

They Would Grow Old. They Would Forget Me.

Is Anyone Anywhere Happy?

You've Only Got So Long To Live.

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.

They Had To Call And Call And Pick The Worms Off Me Like Sticky Pearls.

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.

Sometimes I Nursed Starfish Alive In Jam Jars Of Seawater And Watched Them Grow Back Lost Arms. On This Day, This Awful Birthday Of Otherness, My Rival, Somebody Else, I Flung The Starfish Against A Stone. Let It Perish.

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

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

I Ride Earth's Burning Carousel. Day In, Day Out.

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Gil Scott-Heron

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