Quotes from Plath: Poems

Sylvia Plath ·  256 pages

Rating: (1.4K votes)


“O love, how did you get here?

--Nick and the Candlestick”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems


“There is more than one good way to drown.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems


“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 for nothing. ~ Tulips (1961)”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems


“The storerooms are full of hearts.
This is the city of spare parts.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems


“Let me sit in a flowerpot,
The spiders won't notice.
My heart is a stopped geranium.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems



“Perhaps you considered yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems


“Your shelled bed I remember.
Father, this thick air is murderous.
I would breathe water.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems


“I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems


“the cat unsheathes its claws
the world turns”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems


“The words in his book wormed off the pages.
Everything glittered like blank paper.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems



“You inherit white heather, a bee's wing,
Two suicides, the family wolves,
Hours of blankness.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems


“Through the mind like an oyster labors on and on, / A grain of sand is all we have”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems


About the author

Sylvia Plath
Born place: in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, The United States
Born date October 27, 1932
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Popular quotes

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“Dear Torina, I can't face the idea of sacrificing you to this danger. You must stay alive." He caressed her cheek. "Hear me," he went on. "Even if you feel only friendship, Torina, I've loved you since the day you helped me to my feet. I tried so hard to stop. Then I thought you were dead, and my life hurt every day.”
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