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I knew chemistry would be worse, because I'd seen a big card of the ninety-odd elements hung up in the chemistry lab, and all the perfectly good words like gold and silver and cobalt and aluminum were shortened to ugly abbreviations with different decimal numbers after them.

Sylvia Plath

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Sylvia Plath
Age: 30 †
Born: 1932
Born: October 27
Died: 1963
Died: February 11
Autobiographer
Diarist
Essayist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Boston
Massachusetts
Victoria Lucas
Sylvia Plath Hughes
Seen
Perfectly
Aluminum
Words
Cards
Labs
Bigs
Ugly
Card
Different
Worse
Ninety
Cobalt
Good
Elements
Odd
Decimal
Would
Gold
Hung
Abbreviations
Like
Numbers
Chemistry
Decimals
Knew
Silver
Shortened

More quotes by Sylvia Plath

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I collect men with interesting names.
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You ask me why I spend my life writing? Do I find entertainment? Is it worthwhile? Above all, does it pay? If not, then, is there a reason?... I write only because there is a voice within me. That will not be still.
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Clouds pass and disperse. Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables? Is it for such I agitate my heart?
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If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.
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I think that as far as language goes I'm an American, I'm afraid, my accent is American, my way of talk is an American way of talk, I'm an old-fashioned American. That's probably one of the reasons why I'm in England now and why I'll always stay in England.
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What I hate is the thought of being under a man's thumb, I had told Doctor Nolan. A man doesn't have a worry in the world, while I've got a baby hanging over my head like a big stick, to keep me in line.
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I must get my soul back from you I am killing my flesh without it.
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Read widely of others' experiences, even if it'd be more comfortable to snuggle back in the comforting cotton-wool of blissful ignorance.
Sylvia Plath
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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.
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I'm about fifty years behind as far as my preferences go and I must say that the poets who excite me most are the Americans. There are very few contemporary English poets that I admire.
Sylvia Plath
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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
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Every day is precious and I feel infinitely sad at this time melting away from me.
Sylvia Plath
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…'It always has to end, doesn't it? We always have to separate.' 'Yes,' I said. He was insistent, 'But it doesn't always have to be that way. We could be together some day for always.' 'Oh, no,' I told him, wondering if he knew it was all over. 'We keep running till we die. We separate, get further apart, till we are dead.
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Frustrated? Yes. Why? Because it is impossible for me to be God — or the universal woman-and-man — or anything much. I am what I feel and think and do. I want to express my being as fully as I can because I somewhere picked up the idea that I could justify my being alive that way.
Sylvia Plath
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I think I may well be a Jew.
Sylvia Plath
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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 this is no indication of the true worth of one's total human identity: past, present and future!
Sylvia Plath
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Why can’t I try on different lives, like dresses, to see which fits best and is more becoming?
Sylvia Plath
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I buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night. I couldn't see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.
Sylvia Plath
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I opened the door and blinked out into the bright hall. I had the impression it wasn't night and it wasn't day, but some lurid third interval that had suddenly slipped between them and would never end.
Sylvia Plath
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I dream too much, work too little.
Sylvia Plath