Sylvia Plath: Doing

Sylvia Plath was American poet, novelist and short story writer. Explore interesting quotes on doing.

Sylvia Plath: 684 quotes249 likes

“What obsession do men have for destruction and murder? Who do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled 'enemy?”

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“But writing poems and letters doesn't seem to do much good.”

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I wanted to do everything once and for all and be through with it.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 1, Opening line

“When they asked some old Roman philosopher or other how he wanted to die, he said he would open his veins in a warm bath. I thought it would be easy, lying in the tub and seeing the redness flower from my wrists, flush after flush through the clear water, till I sank to sleep under a surface gaudy as poppies. But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 12

“It's a tango." Marco maneuvered me out among the dancers. "I love tangos." "I can't dance." "You don't have to dance. I'll do that dancing." Marco hooked an arm around my waist and jerked me up against his dazzling white suit. Then he said, "Pretend you are drowning." I shut my eyes, and the music broke over me like a rainstorm. Marco's leg slid forward against mine and my leg slid back and I seemed to be riveted against him, limb for limb, moving as he moved, without any will or knowledge of my own, and after a while I thought, "It doesn't take two to dance, it only takes one," and I let myself blow and bend like a tree in the wind. "What did I tell you?”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Marco's breath scorched my ear. "You're a perfectly respectable dancer."
Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 9

“You said you would kill it this morning.
Do not kill it. It startles me still,
The jut of that odd, dark head, pacing

Through the uncut grass on the elm's hill.
It is something to own a pheasant,
Or just to be visited at all.

I am not mystical: it isn't
As if I thought it had a spirit.
It is simply in its element.

That gives it a kingliness, a right.”

"Pheasant" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/pheasant.html <br class="br">Winter Trees (1972)

“These poems do not live: it's a sad diagnosis.
They grew their toes and fingers well enough,
Their little foreheads bulged with concentration.
If they missed out on walking about like people
It wasn't for any lack of mother-love.”

Sylvia Plath book Crossing the Water

"Stillborn" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/still.html <br class="br">Crossing the Water (1971)

“Later Buddy told me the woman was on a drug that would make her forget she'd had any pain and that when she swore and groaned she really didn't know what she was doing because she was in a kind of twilight sleep. I thought it sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent. Here was a woman in terrible pain, obviously feeling every bit of it or she wouldn't groan like that, and she would go straight home and start another baby, because the drug would make her forget how bad the pain had been, when all the time, in some secret part of her, that long, blind, doorless and windowless corridor of pain was waiting to open up and shut her in again.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 6

“Ironically, Henry James' biography comforts me & I long to make known to him his posthumous reputation — he wrote, in pain, gave all his life (which is more than I could think of doing — I have Ted, will have children — but few friends) & the critics insulted & mocked him, readers didn't read him.”

1958-04-22
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath (2000)

“You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"Daddy" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/daddy.html <br class="br">Ariel (1965)

“I hate her," I said, and waited for the blow to fall. But Doctor Nolan only smiled at me as if something had pleased her very, very much and said, "I suppose you do.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 16

“Now your head, excuse me, is empty.
I have the ticket for that.
Come here, sweetie, out of the closet.
Well, what do you think of that?
Naked as paper to start

But in twenty-five years she'll be silver,
In fifty, gold.
A living doll, everywhere you look.
It can sew, it can cook,
It can talk, talk, talk.

It works, there is nothing wrong with it.
You have a hole, it's a poultice.
You have an eye, it's an image.
My boy, it's your last resort.
Will you marry it, marry it, marry it.”

Sylvia Plath Ariel

"The Applicant" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/applicant.html <br class="br">Ariel (1965)

“What did my fingers do before they held him?
What did my heart do, with its love?”

"Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/3women.html (1962), a radio play published in 1968