Sylvia Plath: Quotes about people

Sylvia Plath was American poet, novelist and short story writer. Explore interesting quotes on people.
Sylvia Plath: 684 quotes249 likes

“The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence. I knew perfectly well the cars were making a noise, and the people in them and behind the lit windows of the buildings were making a noise, and the river was making a noise, but I couldn't hear a thing. The city hung in my window, flat as a poster, glittering and blinking, but it might just as well not have been there at all, for the good it did me.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 2

“I am gone quite mad with the knowledge of accepting the overwhelming number of things I can never know, places I can never go, and people I can never be.”

Sylvia Plath

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I like people too much or not at all.”

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

Variant: Then it hit me and I just blurted, 'I like people too much or not at all. I've got to go down deep, to fall into people, to really know them.
Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“So many people are shut up tight inside themselves like boxes, yet they would open up, unfolding quite wonderfully, if only you were interested in them."

()”

Sylvia Plath

Source: Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: Short Stories, Prose and Diary Excerpts

“How can you be so many women to so many strange people, oh you strange girl?”

Sylvia Plath

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid. 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.”

Sylvia Plath

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I must learn more about these people―try to understand them, put myself in their place. No, instead I am so busy keeping my head above water that I scarcely know who I am, much less who anyone else is.”

Sylvia Plath

“The only reason I remembered this play was because it had a mad person in it, and everything I had ever read about mad people stuck in my mind, while everything else flew out.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“Very few people do this any more. It's too risky. First of all, it's a hell of a responsibility to be yourself. It's much easier to be somebody else or nobody at all.”

Sylvia Plath

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I also hate people to ask cheerfully how you are when they know you're feeling like hell and expect you to say "fine”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?”

Sylvia Plath

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“Instead of the world being divided up into Catholics and Protestants or Republicans and Democrats or white men and black men or even men and women, I saw the world divided into people who had slept with somebody and people who hadn't, and this seemed the only really significant difference between one person and another.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 7
Context: Instead of the world being divided up into Catholics and Protestants or Republicans and Democrats or white men and black men or even men and women, I saw the world divided into people who had slept with somebody and people who hadn't, and this seemed the only really significant difference between one person and another. I thought a spectacular change would come over me the day I crossed the boundary line.

“People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.

From the poem "Sheep in Fog", 2 December 1962, 28 January 1963”

Sylvia Plath

Source: The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel.

That would fix a lot of people.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

“There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 2

“I think writers are the most narcissistic people. Well, I musn't say this, I like many of them, a great many of my friends are writers.”

Sylvia Plath

“I hate handing over money to people for doing what I could just as easily do myself, it makes me nervous.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar