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

“Το κόλπο είναι να κάνεις πάντα σκανδαλώδη πράγματα. Δεν υπάρχει λόγος να περνάς μια σκανδαλώδη νομοθεσία και μετά να δίνεις στους άλλους το χρόνο να προετοιμαστούν σχετικά. Πρέπει να παρεμβαίνεις αμέσως και να την επικαλύπτεις με κάτι ακόμα χειρότερο, προτού η κοινή γνώμη προλάβει να καταλάβει το κακό που τη βρήκε.”
― Jonathan Coe, quote from What a Carve Up!


“You know what we’ve lost, William? We’ve lost a sense of responsibility, at least on the individual level. We have too many people like Mark who believe that the government owes them total, undisciplined freedom. If everyone thought that way, there would be no society. We’re so big, so strong now, that people seem to have forgotten that a part of our strength comes from each person surrendering a portion of his individual urges to the common good. And the common good is defined by who wins at the polls, and the policies they make. Like it or lump it.”
― James Webb, quote from Fields of Fire


“That seems to be another habit of yours. I get broken, and you fix it.”
― Alyssa Day, quote from Atlantis Unleashed


“Laughter went on and on, like sunlight and stone, even if the human beings who laughed did not.”
― Robin McKinley, quote from Chalice


“The quiet transition from autumn to winter is not a bad time at all. It's a time for protecting and securing things and for making sure you've got in as many supplies as you can. It's nice to gather together everything you possess as close to you as possible, to store up your warmth and your thoughts and burrow yourself into a deep hole inside, a core of safety where you can defend what is important and precious and your very own. Then the cold and the storms and the darkness can do their worst. They can grope their way up the walls looking for a way in, but they won't find one, everything is shut, and you sit inside, laughing in your warmth and your solitude, for you have had foresight.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from Moominvalley in November


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