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.
Everything people did seemed so silly, because they only died in the end.
Every woman adores a Fascist,The boot in the face, the bruteBrute heart of a brute like you.
ElmBY SYLVIA PLATHI know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root: It is what you fear.I do not fear it: I have been there.Is it the sea you hear in me, Its dissatisfactions?Or the voice...
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...
But when I took up my pen, my hand made big, jerky letters like those of a child, and the lines sloped down the page from left to right horizontally, as if they were loops of string lying on the paper...
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?
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...
As I lay on my back in bed staring up at the blank, white ceiling the stillness seemed to grow bigger and bigger until I felt my eardrums would burst with it.
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 after fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys...
And then I wondered if as soon as he came to like me he would sink intoordinariness, and if as soon as he came to love me I would find fault after fault, the way I did with Buddy Willard and the boys...
A second wave collapsed over my feet, lipped with white froth, and the chill gripped my ankles with a mortal ache.
A million years of evolution, Eric said bitterly, and what are we? Animals.
A little thing, like children putting flowers in my hair, can fill up the widening cracks in my self-assurance like soothing lanolin. I was sitting out on the steps today, uneasy with fear and discont...
Your shelled bed I remember.Father, this thick air is murderous.I would breathe water.
You are twenty. You are not dead, although you were dead. The girl who died. And was resurrected. Children. Witches. Magic. Symbols. Remember the illogic of the fantasy. The strange tableau in the clo...
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...
Why do you make our case (which is hell enough, and we have enough to test us in these coming cruel years) so utterly and absolutely rigid? I can take the even harder horror of letting myself melt int...
When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tup and seeing the redness flower fro...