Sylvia Quotes

I must be lean & write & make worlds beside this to live in. ~ Sylvia Plath

I thought I only need tell him what I wanted to, and that I could control the picture he had of me by hiding this and revealing that, all the while he thought he was so smart. ~ Sylvia Plath

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. ~ Sylvia Plath

Women's evolution unfolded through stages in the last 100 years. The first stage was "Wonder Woman," an idealized figure who functioned like ~ Sylvia Becker-Hill

The words in his book wormed off the pages.
Everything glittered like blank paper. ~ Sylvia Plath

The thing about nightmares is that you can't prepare for them. They sneak up on you when you are most vulnerable, wreaking havoc and mayhem when you are totally defenseless. And they don't always happen while you're sleeping ~ Sylvia Day

My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water
Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently.
They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep.
Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage -
My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,
My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;
Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks. ~ Sylvia Plath

It's a fact of life that there will be oil spills, as long as oil is moved from place to place, but we must have provisions to deal with them, and a capability that is commensurate with the size of the oil shipments. ~ Sylvia Earle

But perhaps the most overlooked feature of her life was that she was human, and therefore fallible. ~ Sylvia Plath

... * 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. ~ Sylvia Plath

I know we will create a society where there are no rich or poor, no people without work or beauty in their lives, where money itself will disappear, where we shall all be brothers and sisters, where every one will have enough. ~ Sylvia Pankhurst

An unfinished feeling. ~ Sylvia Plath

No one has taken my heart in their hand. I haven't given it ... I have lent myself, rented myself out, but never given myself. ~ Sylvia Kristel

Intuition means exactly what it sounds like, in-tuition! An inner tutor or teaching and learning mechanism that takes us forward daily. It is a resource that, where recognized, has infinite potential. ~ Sylvia Clare

Something in me wants more. I can't rest. ~ Sylvia Plath

I would like to write a symbolic allegory about a person who would not assert her will and communicate with others, but who always believed she was unaccepted, and apart. ~ Sylvia Plath

Two wives despaired of him,' he said. 'When he got engaged to Sylvia, she made it a condition that he should take the cure at Zurich. And it worked. He came back in three months a different man. And he hasn't touched a drop since, even though Sylvia walked out on him.'
'Why did she do that?'
Well, poor Charlie got rather a bore when he stopped drinking. But that's not really the point of the story. ~ Evelyn Waugh

I'll see you at five, ace." "Not a minute later," he ordered gruffly. I laughed despite myself, infatuated with every rough-edged facet of him. "Or what?" Pulling back, he gave me a look that made my toes curl. "Or I come get you. ~ Sylvia Day

The man creates a pseudonym and hides behind it like a worm ~ Sylvia Plath

Tonight was awful. It was the combination of everything. Of the play "Goodbye My Fancy," of wanting, in a juvenile way, to be, like the heroine, a reporter in the trenches, to be loved by a man who admired me, who understood me as much as I understood myself. ~ Sylvia Plath

Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart? ~ Sylvia Plath

Dark and Dangerous. And all mine. ~ Sylvia Day

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. ~ Sylvia Plath

She was the first woman to be hanged at Strangeways Prison in Manchester, ~ Sylvia Perrini

Love set you going like a fat gold watch. ~ Sylvia Plath

The human mind is incredible. It can do nothing without belief, yet practically anything with it. - Elana's father ~ Sylvia Engdahl

I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them. ~ Sylvia Plath

I am I because of that. ~ Sylvia Plath

Murmured, reminding me of the time I'd sung the Sara Bareilles anthem ~ Sylvia Day

People are afraid to die, and even more afraid to live. ~ Sylvia Browne

What I want is for both of us to feel safe. What you and I have together shouldn't be draining us like this. It should be the one rock-solid thing we both count on. ~ Sylvia Day

I smile, now, thinking: we all like to think we are important enough to need psychiatrists ~ Sylvia Plath

We couldn't go to the moon on whale oil. We don't have the capacity yet to consider doing such things as harnessing current sunlight. We're burning ancient sunlight in order to get us to where we now are. But it's costly. ~ Sylvia Earle

Humans have always wondered the big questions, "Who am I? Where have I come from? Where am I going?" It's part of human nature. It's perhaps the underpinnings of religion. ~ Sylvia Earle

my story really can change lives ~ Sylvia Hurt

It's an appreciation for life generally, every bit of life, the smallest creature that lives in the intestines of termites that make termite life possible - to the leaves that turn out oxygen and grab carbon dioxide and with water make simple sugars that feed much of the world. I mean, these are everyday miracles. ~ Sylvia Earle

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. ~ Sylvia Plath

The dress was cut so queerly I couldn't wear any sort of a bra under it, but that didn't matter much as I was skinny as a boy and barely rippled, and I liked feeling almost naked on the hot summer nights. ~ Sylvia Plath

I don't blame you. But if there's anything else you have to tell me, now would be the time."
He pressed forward, urging me to stretch on the couch. Coming over me, he whispered, "I'm in love with you."
With everything going wrong, that was the one thing that was totally right.
It was enough. ~ Sylvia Day

The sun has burned these rocks, and the great continuous ebb and flow of the tide has crumbled the boulders, battered them, worn them down to the smooth sun-scalded stones on the beach which rattle and shift underfoot as one walks over them. A serene sense of the slow inevitability of the gradual changes in the earth's crust comes over me; a consuming love, not of a god, but of the clean unbroken sense that the rocks, which are nameless, the waves which are nameless, the ragged grass, which is nameless, are all defined momentarily through the consciousness of the being who observes them. With the sun burning into rock and flesh, and the wind ruffling grass and hair, there is an awareness that the blind immense unconscious impersonal and neutral forces will endure, and that the fragile, miraculously knit organism which interprets them, endows them with meaning, will move about for a little, then falter, fail, and decompose at last into the anonomous soil, voiceless, faceless, without identity. ~ Sylvia Plath

Sylvia, on the other hand, looks like she eats stress as an amuse-bouche and turns problems into cocktails. ~ Susan Juby

Is there anything courageous or brave about making the only possible choice that will save your life? When you're drowning, you grab any hand that's offered. To me, bravery is a spontaneous decision to save somebody else's life when your own is in danger. ~ Claire Sylvia

If you're in the same room with me, I don't see anyone else ~ Sylvia Day

The human mind is so limited it can only build an arbitrary heaven - and usually the physical comforts they endow it with are naively the kind that can be perceived as we humans perceive - nothing more. No: perhaps I will awake to find myself burning in hell. I think not. I think I will be snuffed out. Black is sleep; black is a fainting spell; and black is death, with no light, no waking. ~ Sylvia Plath

It started back in '79,
My whole darn future was on the line.
I created a brand new sensation
Through my mind and the whole darn nation ... ~ Sylvia Robinson

With headlines like "Marry Now or Never," the specter of marriage loomed. It was a constant fear, a threat, a reminder. But Sylvia wasn't baited by those pretty tales of line and hook: the bride-white cake, the prime rib and steak, marriage- that bleak fable- with Husband cast as warden, the future dead clear and blighted. ~ Elizabeth Winder

Gideon was an untamed animal behind closed doors, a lover who bared me to the soul every time he made love to me. ~ Sylvia Day

The next morning I had Twentieth-Century American Poetry at MCC. This old woman gave a lecture wherein she managed to talk for ninety minutes about Sylvia Plath without ever once quoting a single word of Sylvia Plath. ~ John Green

When I married your daughter, I accepted full responsibility for both her and her happiness. If there are consequences to be faced, I have no problem facing them. His ~ Sylvia Day

I couldn't stand the idea of a woman having to have a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life, one pure and one not. ~ Sylvia Plath

Health care costs are an issue both for the government and for our larger economy. ~ Sylvia Mathews Burwell

I hate it, find it hideous, loathsome. I have built it up to a devouring, malicious monster. I am letting it ruin my whole life. My reason is leaving me, and I want to get out of this. ~ Sylvia Plath

God, Eva. Your cunt loves my cock." Reaching for the headboard, Gideon stretched over me, my legs trapped between us. Fully exposed and tilted back for his pleasure, I was helpless to do more than watch as he straightened his hips and sank the last few inches of his penis into me. The sound that left me was a harsh wail, the pleasure so intense it hurt. Distantly, I heard Gideon curse, felt his powerful body shudder. "You good?" he bit out, his teeth grinding. I tried to catch my breath, my lungs expanding as much as they were able. "Eva." He growled my name. "Are. You. Good?" Unable to speak, I reached for his hips, my fingers catching in his boxer briefs. I had a moment to think how hot that was, that he hadn't bothered to undress either one of ~ Sylvia Day

Shut up in public those bloody private wounds. ~ Sylvia Plath

Wealth, if not a mere flash in the pan, compels the wealthy to become wealthier. ~ Sylvia Townsend Warner

Lady Sylvia McCordle: Mr Weissman
Tell us about the film you're going to make.
Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It's called "Charlie Chan In London". It's a detective story.
Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London?
Morris Weissman: Well, not really. Most of it takes place at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one, actually. Murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for the weekend, everyone's a suspect. You know, that sort of thing.
Constance: How horrid. And who turns out to have done it?
Morris Weissman: Oh, I couldn't tell you that. It would spoil it for you.
Constance: Oh, but none of us will see it. ~ Julian Fellowes

A plaster girl with intense glass eyes sat astride a bicycle pedaling at the maddest pace; though its wheel spokes spun hypnotically, the bicycle of course never budged: all that effort and the poor girl going nowhere. It was a pitifully human situation, and one that Sylvia could so exactly identify with herself that she always felt a real pang. ~ Truman Capote

Humans are the only creatures with the ability to dive deep in the sea, fly high in the sky, send instant messages around the globe, reflect on the past, assess the present and imagine the future. ~ Sylvia Earle

I was happiest when I was alone with her. She revitalized me, made me anticipate living in a way I never had before. I ~ Sylvia Day

Eva: You like 'em tall and skinny
Gideon: Last I checked, the wife I can't resist was petite and voluptuous. Spectacularly so ~ Sylvia Day

Empowering small farmers to increase productivity, improve crop quality and access reliable markets is critical to addressing global hunger and poverty. ~ Sylvia Mathews Burwell

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. ~ Sylvia Plath

No innovation in the past 200 years has done more to save lives and improve health than the sanitation revolution triggered by invention of the toilet. But it did not go far enough. It only reached one-third of the world. ~ Sylvia Mathews Burwell

Why?" He frowned. "You know there's no one else for either of us. What are you waiting for? ~ Sylvia Day

So I perversely circle the late stars, drowsier and drowsier, sleepily longing for something. ~ Sylvia Plath

I'm so in love with Gideon. He's changed my life in so many ways. He makes me feel beautiful and precious. I know it seems too fast, but he's the one for me. ~ Sylvia Day

If you have no past or no 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. But the cold reasoning mass of gray entrail in my cranium which parrots, 'I think, therefore I am,' whispers that there is always the turning, the upgrade, the new slant. And so I wait. ~ Sylvia Plath

I Am Vertical

But I would rather be horizontal.
I am not a tree with my root in the soil
Sucking up minerals and motherly love
So that each March I may gleam into leaf,
Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed
Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,
Unknowing I must soon unpetal.
Compared with me, a tree is immortal
And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,
And I want the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,
The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.
I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.
Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping
I must most perfectly resemble them--
Thoughts gone dim.
It is more natural to me, lying down.
Then the sky and I are in open conversation,
And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:
The the trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

"I Am Vertical", 28 March 1961 ~ Sylvia Plath

I've learned to allow myself the room to fall in love with what I'm writing. ~ Sylvia Day

The frost makes a flower,
the dew makes a star. ~ Sylvia Plath

If you take a deep breath and look around, 'Look what's happening to me!' can become 'Look what's happening!' And what's happening? The incredible drama of life is happening. And we're in it! ~ Sylvia Boorstein

Yes, I was infatuated with you: I am still. No one has ever heightened such a keen capacity of physical sensation in me. I cut you out because I couldn't stand being a passing fancy. Before I give my body, I must give my thoughts, my mind, my dreams. And you weren't having any of those. ~ Sylvia Plath

My mind is killing me
- The Glass Child, Stuck In My Mind ~ Charlotte Eriksson

Fermat's assertion that if n is any whole number and p any prime, then n multiplied by itself p times minus n is divisible by p. ~ Sylvia Nasar

You wonder if you've got what it takes to keep building up obstacle courses for your self, and to keep leaping through them, sprained ankle or not. ~ Sylvia Plath

I've made the most important discovery of my life. It's only in the mysterious equation of love that any logic or reasons can be found. ~ Sylvia Nasar

I think God gave every one of us a cell phone, we just dropped it. ~ Sylvia Browne

A time of darkness, despair, disillusion-so black only the inferno of the human mind can be-symbolic death, and numb shock-then the painful agony of slow rebirth and psychic regeneration ~ Sylvia Plath

I'm losing my mind without you. ~ Sylvia Day

A friend in danger is not someone who should be deserted. Safety is not always the right path. (Sylvia) ~ Patricia Briggs

The day I went into physics class it was death. ~ Sylvia Plath

While natural disasters capture headlines and national attention short-term, the work of recovery and rebuilding is long-term. ~ Sylvia Mathews Burwell

It has taken these many hundreds of millions of years to fine-tune the Earth to a point where it is suitable for the likes of us. ~ Sylvia Earle

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. ~ Sylvia Plath

The feel of your big cock in me is delicious, but far more so when it's moving. ~ Sylvia Day

I am both worse and better than you thought. ~ Sylvia Plath

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. ~ Sylvia Plath

Day now, night now, at head, side, feet,
They stand their vigil in gowns of stone,
Faces blank as the day I was born,
Their shadows long in the setting sun
That never brightens or goes down.
And this is the kingdom you bore me to,
Mother, mother. But no frown of mine
Will betray the company I keep. ~ Sylvia Plath

Good at believing what they wanted and ignoring any proof to the contrary ~ Sylvia Day

He rubbed the spot over his chest that ached for Jessica. And her regard will never alter or diminish. She knows the worst there is to know about me, yet she loves me in spite of my mistakes. No ... I would say perhaps she loves me because of them; because of how they've shaped me. ~ Sylvia Day

And now you try
Your handful of notes;
The clear vowels rise like balloons. ~ Sylvia Plath

Education, fundamentally, is the increase of the percentage of the conscious in relation to the unconscious. It must be a developing idea. ~ Sylvia Ashton-Warner

My mother at the age of 65 decided she was going to run for mayor. She had never run for public office, and she decided she wanted to try and do some things for the community. ~ Sylvia Mathews Burwell

The more painful it is, tragically, the more you do learn, though, that's the good part. ~ Sylvia Browne

TB is like living with a bomb in your lungs. You just lie around very quietly hoping it won't go off ~ Sylvia Plath

I feel good with my husband: I like his warmth and his bigness and his being-there and his making and his jokes and stories and what he reads and how he likes fishing and walks and pigs and foxes and little animals and is honest and not vain or fame-crazy and how he shows his gladness for what I cook him and joy for when I make him something, a poem or a cake, and how he is troubled when I am unhappy and wants to do anything so I can fight out my soul-battles and grow up with courage and a philosophical ease. I love his good smell and his body that fits with mine as if they were made in the same body-shop to do just that. What is only pieces, doled out here and there to this boy and that boy, that made me like pieces of them, is all jammed together in my husband. So I don't want to look around any more: I don't need to look around for anything. ~ Sylvia Plath

I think writers are the most narcissistic people. Well, I musn't say this, I like many of them, a great many of my friends are writers. ~ Sylvia Plath

I started adding up all the things I couldn't do. ~ Sylvia Plath

Mother of otherness,
Eat me.
--from "Poem for a Birthday - Who", written 1960 ~ Sylvia Plath

When people ask the Dalai Lama, "Is Buddhism a religion?" he answers, "Yes, it is." Then they ask, "What kind of religion is it?" He responds, "My religion is kindness." You might think, "Everyone's is." Everyone's is. That's true. It's not complicated to describe the goal of a spiritual life. It's easier than you think to explain it. It's more difficult than you can imagine to do it. ~ Sylvia Boorstein