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Winning Or Losing An Argument, Receiving An Acceptance Or Rejection, Is No Proof Of The Validity Or Value Of Personal Identity. One May Be Wrong, Mistaken, Or A Poor Craftsman, Or Just Ignorant - But This Is No Indication Of The True Worth Of One's Total Human Identity: Past, Present And Future!

-Sylvia Plath

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Winning Or Losing An

Sylvia Plath

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Winning Or Losing An Argument, Receiving An Acceptance Or Rejection, Is No Proof Of The Validity Or Value Of Personal Identity. One May Be Wrong, Mistaken, Or A Poor Craftsman, Or Just Ignorant - But This Is No Indication Of The True Worth Of One's Total Human Identity: Past, Present And Future!

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

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

I Want To Become Acutely Aware Of All I've Taken For Granted.

The Thought That I Might Kill Myself Formed In My Mind Coolly As A Tree Or A Flower.

And I Sit Here Without Identity: Faceless. My Head Aches.

Not Being Perfect Hurts.

Not Being Perfect

A Man's World Is Different From A Woman's World And A Man's Emotions Are Different From A Woman's Emotions And Only Marriage Can Bring The Two Different Sets Of Emotions Together Properly.

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

I Am Dead To Them, Even Though I Once Flowered.

…* To Learn That Money Makes Life Smooth In Some Ways, And To Feel How Tight And Threadbare Life Is If You Have Too Little. * To Despise Money, Which Is A Farce, Mere Paper, And To Hate What You Have To Do For It, And Yet To Long To Have It In Order To Be Free From Slaving For It. * To Yearn Toward Art, Music, Ballet And Good Books, And Get Them Only In Tantalizing Snatches.

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.

…beating Time Along The Edge Of Thought.

The Thing About Writing Is Not To Talk, But To Do It; No Matter How Bad Or Even Mediocre It Is, The Process And Production Is The Thing, Not The Sitting And Theorizing About How One Should Write Ideally, Or How Well One Could Write If One Really Wanted To Or Had The Time.

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

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

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

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

Jealousy Can Open The Blood, It Can Make Black Roses.

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.

I Am What I Feel And Think And Do.

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.

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.

How Can You Be So Many Women To So Many Strange People, Oh You Strange Girl?

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

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

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

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?

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.

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

To Annihilate The World By Annihilation Of Oneself Is The Deluded Height Of Desperate Egoism.

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.

Compared With Me, A Tree Is Immortal.

I Have Done, This Year, What I Said I Would: Overcome My Fear Of Facing A Blank Page Day After Day, Acknowledging Myself, In My Deepest Emotions, A Writer, Come What May.

I Do Not Know Who I Am Tonight.

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.

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

I Felt Very Low. I Had Been Unmasked Only That Morning By Jay Cee Herself, And I Felt Now That All The Uncomfortable Suspicions I Had About Myself Were Coming True. After Nineteen Years Of Running After Good Marks And Prizes And Grants Of One Sort And Another, I Was Letting Up, Slowing Down, Dropping Clean Out Of Race.

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

It Never Occurred To Me To Say No.

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.

The Truth Comes To Me. The Truth Loves Me.

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.

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

Your Room Is Not Your Prison. You Are.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

How Many Different Deaths I Can Die?

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

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

I Think I Am Mad Sometimes.

You Smile. No, It Is Not Fatal.

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.

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

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 Must Bridge The Gap Between Adolescent Glitter And Mature Glow.

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

Time Of My Life

The Hardest Thing, I Think, Is To Live Richly In The Present, Without Letting It Be Tainted & Spoiled Out Of Fear For The Future Or Regret For A Badly-managed Past.

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

I Talk To God But The Sky Is Empty.

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.

Perhaps, Perhaps This Would Be The One To Pull Me Out Of My Plunge.

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.

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

The One Thing I Was Good At Was Winning Scholarships And Prizes, And That Era Was Coming To An End.

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

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

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

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

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

There Is So Much Hurt In This Game Of Searching For A Mate, Of Testing, Trying. And You Realize Suddenly That You Forgot It Was A Game, And Turn Away In Tears.

Tomorrow Is Another Day Toward Death.

Tomorrow Is Another Day

O Love, How Did You Get Here?

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.

It Is So Much Safer Not To Feel, Not To Let The World Touch Me.

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

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

The Box Is Only Temporary.

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

Everything People Did Seemed So Silly, Because They Only Died In The End.

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

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 Lay And Cried, And Began To Feel Again, To Admit I Was Human, Vulnerable, Sensitive. I Began To Remember How It Had Been Before; How There Was That Germ Of Positive Creativeness. Character Is Fate; And Damn, I'd Better Work On My Character. I Had Been Withdrawing Into A Retreat Of Numbness: It Is So Much Safer To Not Feel, Not To Let The World Touch One.

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

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

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

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.

Slowly, Slowly, Catch The Monkey.

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

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

Dying Is An Art, Like Everything Else. I Do It Exceptionally Well.

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

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

I Felt Wise And Cynical As All Hell.

I Never Feel So Much Myself As When I'm In A Hot Bath.

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.

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

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

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?

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

I’d Discovered, After A Lot Of Extreme Apprehension About What Spoons To Use, That If You Do Something Incorrect At Table With A Certain Arrogance, As If You Knew Perfectly Well You Were Doing It Properly, You Can Get Away With It And Nobody Will Think You Are Bad-mannered Or Poorly Brought Up. They Will Think You Are Original And Very Witty.

Character Is Fate.

Sometimes I Feel Like I'm Not Solid. I'm Hollow. There's Nothing Behind My Eyes. I'm A Negative Of A Person. All I Want Is Blackness, Blackness And Silence.

What A Man Wants Is A Mate And What A Woman Wants Is Infinite Security,’ And, ‘what A Man Is Is An Arrow Into The Future And A What A Woman Is Is The Place The Arrow Shoots Off From.

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.

I Like People Too Much Or Not At All.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

People Or Stars Regard Me Sadly, I Disappoint Them.

The Abstract Kills, The Concrete Saves.

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

You Have To Be Able To Make A Real Creative Life For Yourself, Before You Can Expect Anyone Else To Provide One Ready-made For You.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 Woke To The Sound Of Rain.

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

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

I Felt Like A Racehorse In A World Without Racetracks.

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—— The Peacefulness Is So Big It Dazes You, And It Asks Nothing, A Name Tag, A Few Trinkets. It Is What The Dead Close On, Finally; I Imagine Them Shutting Their Mouths On It, Like A Communion Tablet.

Sure, I’m Dramatic And Sloppily Semi-cynical And Semi-sentimental. But, In Leisure Years I Could Grow And Choose My Way. Now I Am Living On The Edge. We All Are On The Brink, And It Takes A Lot Of Nerve, A Lot Of Energy, To Teeter On The Edge, Looking Over, Looking Down Into The Windy Blackness And Not Being Quite Able To Make Out, Through The Yellow, Stinking Mist, Just What Lies Below In The Slime, In The Oozing, Vomit-streaked Slime; And So I Could Go On, My Thoughts, Writing Much, Trying To Find The Core, The Meaning For Myself.

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?

Bright Beads Of Red Are Rising Through The Ink, Hearts-blood Bubbles Smearing Out Into The Black Stream

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.

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.

Wear Your Heart On Your Skin In This Life.

I’ll Never Speak To God Again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I Collect Men With Interesting Names.

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

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

O Heart, Such Disorganization!

Disorganization

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

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

Strange, When One Thinks Of All The Other Boys, Infinite Experimental Kisses, Test Tube Infatuations, Crushes, Pseudo-loves. All Through This Physical Separation, Through The Testing And The Trying Of The Others, There Has Been This Peculiar Rapport, Comradeship, Of Us Two So Alike, So Similar, But For Science-boy And Humanities-girl - The Introspection, Self Examination, Biannual Deep Summarizing Conversations, And Then The Platonic Parting.

Oh What A Poet I Will Flay Myself Into.

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 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.

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.

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 Wanted To Be Where Nobody I Knew Could Ever Come.

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

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.

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

Do We Always Grind Through The Present, Doomed To Throw A Gold Haze Of Fond Retrospect Over The Past?

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

I Wanted To Do Everything Once And For All And Be Through With It.

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

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

I Like People Too Much Or Not At All. I've Got To Go Down Deep, To Fall Into People, To Really Know Them.

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.

I Don’t Care About Anyone, And The Feeling Is Quite Obviously Mutual.

I Think The Coming Of Spring, The Stars Overhead, The First Snowfall And So On Are Gifts For A Child, A Young Poet.

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

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

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

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

I Wondered What I Thought I Was Burying.

Like A Cat I Have Nine Times To Die.

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

I Think That As Far As Language Goes I'm An American, I'm Afraid, My Accent Is American, My Way Of Talk Is An American Way Of Talk, I'm An Old-fashioned American. That's Probably One Of The Reasons Why I'm In England Now And Why I'll Always Stay In England.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

I Feel Self-repressed Again. The Old Fall Disease. Where Is My Willpower? The Idea Of A Life Gets In The Way Of My Life...i Dream Too Much, Work Too Little.

Is To Throw Together Events From My Own Life, Fictionalizing To Add Color—it’s A Pot Boiler Really, But I Think It Will Show How Isolated A Person Feels When He Is Suffering A Breakdown . . . I’ve Tried To Picture My World And The People In It As Seen Through The Distorting Lens Of A Bell Jar.

No Day Is Safe From News Of You.

... 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.

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

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

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.

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 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.)

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