Quotes from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Kiss me, and you will see how important I am.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I have the choice of being constantly active and happy or introspectively passive and sad. Or I can go mad by ricocheting in between.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter— they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“let me live, love, and say it well in good sentences”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“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, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I desire the things that will destroy me in the end.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Can you understand? Someone, somewhere, can you understand me a little, love me a little? For all my despair, for all my ideals, for all that - I love life. But it is hard, and I have so much - so very much to learn.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“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, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of "parties" with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear. And when at last you find someone to whom you feel you can pour out your soul, you stop in shock at the words you utter - they are so rusty, so ugly, so meaningless and feeble from being kept in the small cramped dark inside you so long. Yes, there is joy, fulfillment and companionship - but the loneliness of the soul in its appalling self-consciousness is horrible and overpowering.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I must get my soul back from you; I am killing my flesh without it.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“How we need another soul to cling to.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I don’t care about anyone, and the feeling is quite obviously mutual.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I love people. Everybody. I love them, I think, as a stamp collector loves his collection. Every story, every incident, every bit of conversation is raw material for me. My love's not impersonal yet not wholly subjective either. I would like to be everyone, a cripple, a dying man, a whore, and then come back to write about my thoughts, my emotions, as that person. But I am not omniscient. I have to live my life, and it is the only one I'll ever have. And you cannot regard your own life with objective curiosity all the time...”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I wonder why I don't go to bed and go to sleep. But then it would be tomorrow, so I decide that no matter how tired, no matter how incoherent I am, I can skip on hour more of sleep and live.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Life has been some combination of fairy-tale coincidence and joie de vivre and shocks of beauty together with some hurtful self-questioning.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I want to taste and glory in each day, and never be afraid to experience pain; and never shut myself up in a numb core of nonfeeling, or stop questioning and criticizing life and take the easy way out. To learn and think: to think and live; to live and learn: this always, with new insight, new understanding, and new love.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“And the danger is that in this move toward new horizons and far directions, that I may lose what I have now, and not find anything except loneliness.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Yes, my consuming desire is to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, barroom regulars—to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording—all this is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always supposedly in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yes, God, I want to talk to everybody as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night...”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over dramatize it, or underplay it, exaggerate the wrong parts or ignore the important ones. At any rate, you never write it quite the way you want to.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit. I have none of the selfless love of my mother. I have none of the plodding, practical love. . . . . I am, to be blunt and concise, in love only with myself, my puny being with its small inadequate breasts and meager, thin talents. I am capable of affection for those who reflect my own world.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Living with him is like being told a perpetual story: his mind is the biggest, most imaginative I have ever met. I could live in its growing countries forever.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of 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, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Let's face it: I'm scared, scared and frozen. First, I guess I'm afraid for myself... the old primitive urge for survival. It's getting so I live every moment with terrible intensity. It all flowed over me with a screaming ache of pain... remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I've taken for granted. When you feel that this may be good-bye, the last time, it hits you harder.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

About the author

Popular quotes

“Finding a homeland is not the same as dwelling in the place where our ancestors once used to live.”   —KRZYSZTOF CZYZEWSKI”
― Tony Judt, quote from Ill Fares the Land

“The critical question for our generation—and for every generation—
is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the
friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and
all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties
you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no
human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with
heaven, if Christ were not there? ”
― John Piper, quote from God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself

“You collect art: you must know that the miniature artists, at the end of careers spent painting the tiniest, most exacting details that no one would ever look at, would often put their eyes out with needles. Too much beauty, yes, but also too much seeing. They were tired of seeing. The dark was safe and warm and comfortable. Blindness was a gift. I still have seeing to do.”
― Ian McDonald, quote from The Dervish House

“For whatever time we might have, my love. For whatever time we might have.”
― Paula Brackston, quote from The Witch's Daughter

“Just see the difference—in the ancient days, people used to “fall in love.” Now people “make love.” You see the difference? Falling in love is being overwhelmed by love; it is passive. Making love is almost profane, almost destroying its beauty. It is active, as if you are doing something; you are manipulating and controlling. Now people have changed the language—rather than using “falling in love” they use “making love.”
― Osho, quote from Love, Freedom, and Aloneness: The Koan of Relationships

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.