“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

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American poet, novelist and short story writer 1932–1963

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