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Midway in our life's journey, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood.- The Inferno, Dante
I am the way into the city of woe.
I am the way to a forsaken people.
I am the way into eternal sorrow.
Sacred justice moved my architect.
I was raised here by divine omnipotence,
Primordial love and ultimate intellect.
Only those elements time cannot wear
Were made before me, and beyond time I stand.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.- The Inferno, Dante
"Soliloquy of the Solipsist", Sylvia Plath
I?
I walk alone;
The midnight street
Spins itself under my feet;
When my eyes shut
These dreaming houses all snuff out;
Through a whim of mine
Over gables the moon's celestial onion
Hangs high.
I
Make houses shrink
And trees diminish
By going far; my look's leash
Dangles the puppet-people
Who, unaware how they dwindle,
Laugh, kiss, get drunk,
Nor guess that if I choose to blink
They die.
I
When in good humor,
Give grass its green
Blazon sky blue, and endow the sun
With gold;
Yet, in my wintriest moods, I hold
Absolute power
To boycott color and forbid any flower
To be.
I
Know you appear
Vivid at my side,
Denying you sprang out of my head,
Claiming you feel
Love fiery enough to prove flesh real,
Though it's quite clear
All your beauty, all your wit, is a gift, my dear,
From me.
The courage of the shut mouth, in spite of artillery!- "The Courage of Shutting-Up", Sylvia Plath
A squeal of brakes.
Or is it a death cry?- "Stopped Dead", Sylvia Plath
If you dissect a bird
to diagram the tongue,
you'll cut the cord
articulating song.- "Trio of Love Songs", Sylvia Plath
She’s gone. I am abused, and my relief
Must be to loathe her.- William Shakespeare
Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.- Voltaire
None of us can help the things in life has done to us. They’re done before you realize it, and once they’re done they make you do other things until at last everything comes between you and what you’d like to be, and you have lost your true self forever.- Eugene O’Neill
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.- Alexander Pope
I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life's a bitch. You've got to go out and kick ass.- Maya Angelou
To the query, 'What is a friend?' his reply was, 'A single soul dwelling in two bodies.'- Aristotle
Don't you know that a cynic is just a sad romantic?- Sam Elliott
He who fights with monsters should take care that he does not become a monster. Gaze long into the abyss, and the abyss gazes into you.- Friedrich Nietzsche
Faith is what makes life bearable, with all its tragedies and ambiguities and sudden, startling joys.- "Walking on Water", Madeleine L'Engle
In a sense, he thought, all we consist of is memories. Our personalities are constructed from memories, our lives are organized around memories, our cultures are built upon the foundation of shared memories that we call history and science. But now, to give up a memory, to give up knowledge, to give up the past...- Sphere, Michael Crichton
His entire being rejected the idea of forgetting.- Sphere, Michael Crichton
I have had my chances. I have tried and tried.
I have stitched life into me like a rare organ,
And walked carefully, precariously, like something rare.
I have tried not to think too hard. I have tried to be natural.- "Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices", Sylvia Plath
I am not ugly. I am even beautiful.
The mirror gives back a woman without deformity.- "Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices", Sylvia Plath
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.- "Lady Lazarus", Sylvia Plath
The world is splitting open at my feet like a ripe, juicy watermelon. If only I can work, work, work to justify all my opportunities.- Sylvia Plath
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.- Sylvia Plath
Away from the rain and wet feet of Paris, with colored lights wavering in the gutters running with water, and the Seine flowed gray and sluggish by the quais and Notre Dame lifted two towers to a lowering, thick, curded gray sky.- Sylvia Plath
Sad Hamlet, with a knife?
Where do you stash your life?- "Stopped Dead", Sylvia Plath
I am too pure for you or anyone.
Your body
Hurts me as the world hurts God.- "Fever 103", Sylvia Plath
We were stiff and cramped, but revived over breakfast on the train and has a delightful, gray morning sitting by the Seine, watching the fishermen on the bank and the women on the barges hanging out washing. Such a joy to have subtle, gray weather after the blank blazing sun. Life is so much more heightened by contrasts....Paris is not French Paris; the only language you hear is English...I really love this city above any I've ever been in; it is dear and graceful and elegant and what one makes it. I could never live in London or New York or Madrid, or even Rome, but here, yes...- Sylvia Plath, from Letters Home
France splits open like a ripe fig in the mind; we are raping the land, we are not stopping.- Sylvia Plath, from Letters Home
I am not worried that poems reach relatively few people. As it is, they go surprisingly far- among strangers, around the world, even. Farther that the words of a classroom teacher or the prescriptions of a doctor; if they are very lucky, farther than a lifetime.- "Context", Sylvia Plath
As from a star I saw, coldly and soberly, the separateness of everything. I felt the wall of my skin: I am I. That stone is a stone. My beautiful fusion with the things of this world was over.- "Ocean 1212-W", Sylvia Plath
I was being tailored to an Okay Image.- "America! America!", Sylvia Plath
Did I glimpse, in the First Aid cabinet, a sparkle of bottles- soothers and smootheners for the embryo rebel, the artist, the odd?- "America! America!", Sylvia Plath
But how can I go on being quiet, without a soul to talk to wholly here, who is not somehow drastically involved, or near enough to at least be glad that I am unhappy.- Sylvia Plath, from her Notebooks, Feb. 19, 1956
There is so much hurt in this game of searching for a mate, of testing, trying. Amd you realize suddenly that you forgot it was a game, and turn away in tears.- from a letter to Eddie Cohen, Sylvia Plath
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?- from a letter to Eddie Cohen, Sylvia Plath
I will cultivate restraint.- Syliva Plath
It seems almost an incredible relief to know that there is someone outside oneself who is not happy all the time. We must be at low ebb when we are this far into the black: that everyone else, merely because they are "other", is invulnerable. That is a damn lie.- Sylvia Plath
I suppose I was most appalled that you should bind me to you...and that you could leave me this cut open, my heart utterly gone, without anesthetic or stitching; my vital blood was spilling on the barren table, and nothing could grow. Well, it still is spilling.- Sylvia Plath
in the beginning was the word and the word was sassoon and it was a terrible word for it created eden and the golden age back to which fallen eva looks mingling her crystal tears with the yellow dahlias that sprout from the lips of her jaundiced adam.
be christ! she cries, and rise before my eyes while the blue marys bless us with singing. and when, she asks (for even eva is practical), will this resurrection occur?- from a letter to Richard Sassoon, Sylvia Plath
There is all that mess and scorn between us, and no bitterness ever entirely vanishes between the rejector and the rejected.- Sylvia Plath