I hated to serve men in any way.
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 felt the first man I slept with must be intelligent, so I could respect him.
I felt now that all the uncomfortable suspicions I had about myself were coming true, and I couldn't hide the truth much longer. After nineteen years of running after good marks and prizes and grants...
I don't want to use higher education as an escape from responsibility, but I feel there is so much more awareness I should have before plunging onto the field of battle.
I didn’t want any flowers, I only wantedto lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.How free it is, you have no idea how free.
I didn't know shorthand either.This meant I couldn't get a good job after college. My mother kept telling me nobody wanted a plain English major. But an English major who knew shorthand would be somet...
I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.
I could feel the winter shaking my bones and banging my teeth together.
I am afraid. I am not solid, but hollow. I feel behind my eyes a numb, paralyzed cavern, a pit of hell, a mimicking nothingness. I never thought, I never wrote, I never suffered. I want to kill myself...
I am I am I am.
How many different deaths I can die?
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.
God, let me think clearly and brightly; let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences, let me someday see who I am.
Eternity bores me,I never wanted it.From the poem Years, 16 November 1962
Do you know what a poem is, Esther?'No, what?' I would say.A piece of dust.'Then, just as he was smiling and starting to look proud, I would say, 'So are the cadavers you cut up. So are the people you...
Character is fate.
But I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure at all. How did I know that somedayat college, in Europe, somewhere, anywherethe bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?
Be stoic when necessary and write-you have seen a lot, felt deeply, and your problems are universal enough to be made meaningful-WRITE.
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 LuciferBewareBeware.Out of the ashI rise with my red hairAnd I eat men lik...