
“I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.”
Source: The Collected Poems
"Elm" http://www.angelfire.com/tn/plath/elm.html
Source: Ariel (1965)
Context: p>I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.</p
“I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.”
Source: The Collected Poems
Awareness and consciousness
Source: "I am That." P.91-2.
Letter to the Very Reverend A. Martin, Vincennes, 1844-10-03.
Context: I must close now, for I am obliged to go to Terre Haute, where I am called to court to explain my conduct and defend myself against accusations relative to counterfeit money that was said to have been received from me. One has to come to America to be treated thus! Sometimes I am so disheartened with this country that I feel as if I were carrying on my shoulders the weight of its highest mountains, and in my heart all the thorns of its wilderness. Pray for me occasionally that I may not lose courage; nay, more, that I may be brave enough to hold up others who falter sometimes.
“Shadows…bring softness to every thing. An object and its shadow are softness and hardness.”
Everything Has to Do with Hardness and Softness (1969)
Mobutu, asked by a German journalist to justify the expense of his Concorde while the nation's economy was in crisis. Meredith, p. 532
“Turn that thing off, its driving me mad!”
The Osbournes television show