Quote

Sometimes I nursed starfish alive in jam jars of seawater and watched them grow back lost arms. On this day, this awful birthday of otherness, my rival, somebody else, I flung the starfish against a stone. Let it perish.

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
Grow
Perish
Somebody
Rivals
Starfish
Grows
Watched
Nursed
Alive
Birthday
Otherness
Lost
Stone
Flung
Else
Awful
Rival
Back
Stones
Jars
Sometimes
Arms
Jam

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With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can't start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It's like quicksand... hopeless from the start.
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I said: I must remember this, being small.
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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.
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I deserve that, don't I, some sort of blazing love that I can live with.
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You smile. No, it is not fatal.
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All the heat and fear had purged itself. I felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung suspended a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.
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It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it.
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There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.
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The slime of all my yesterdays rots in the hollow of my skull.
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I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly, as the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody I have nothing to do with explosions.
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I'm happier writing about doctors than I would have been being one.
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It is best to meet in a cul-de-sac, A palace of velvet With windows of mirrors. There one is safe, There are no family photographs, No rings through the nose, no cries.
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