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1 " Between Sylvia and me there existed as between my own mother and me - a sort of psychic osmosis which, at times, was very wonderful and comforting; at other times an unwelcome invasion of privacy (words from Aurelia Plath from the Introduction) "
― Sylvia Plath , Letters Home
2 " How frail the human heart must be―a mirrored pool of thought. "
3 " I felt very happy. To think that I didn't have to torture myself sitting in a smoke-filled room with a painted party smile, watching my date get drunk "
4 " I am afraid of getting older. I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day—spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote. I want to be free. (...) I want, I think, to be omniscient… I think I would like to call myself "The girl who wanted to be God." Yet if I were not in this body, where would I be—perhaps I am destined to be classified and qualified. But, oh, I cry out against it. I am I—I am powerful—but to what extent? I am I. "
5 " I am afraid of getting older. I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day, spare me from the relentless cage of routine and rote. I want to be free. I want, I think, to be omniscient. "
6 " ...Life happens so hard and fast I sometimes wonder who is me... "
7 " Your security and love of life don't depend on the presence of another, but only on yourself, your chosen work, and your developing identity. Then you can safely choose to enrich your life by marrying another person, and not, as e e cummings says, until. "
8 " I would rather be a mediocre writer than a bad actress. "
9 " I write only becauseThere is a voice within meThat will not be still "
10 " …I am glad the rain is coming down hard. It’s the way I feel inside. "
11 " The consequences of love affairs would stop me from my independent freedom of creative activity, and I don't intend to be stopped. "
12 " Writing sharpens life; life enriches writing. "
13 " Don't talk to me about the world needing cheerful stuff! What the person out of Belsen — physical or psychological — wants is nobody saying the birdies still go tweet-tweet, but the full knowledge that somebody else has been there and knows the worst, just what it is like. "
14 " The thing about writing is not to talk, but to do it; no matter how bad or even mediocre it is, the process and production is the thing, not the sitting and theorizing about how one should write ideally, or how well one could write if one really wanted to or had the time. As Mr. Kazin told me: 'You don't write to support yourself; you work to support your writing. "
15 " ..it just seems that I am running on a purposeless treadmill, behind and paralyzed in science, dreading every day of the horrible year ahead when I should be reveling in my major. "
16 " I hate it, find it hideous, loathsome. I have built it up to a devouring, malicious monster. I am letting it ruin my whole life. My reason is leaving me, and I want to get out of this. "
17 " ...for I realized how narrow my world had been and that self-education could be and should be an exciting life-long adventure. "
