Quotes from book
The Bell Jar

The Bell Jar
Sylvia Plath

The Bell Jar is the only novel written by the American writer and poet Sylvia Plath. Originally published under the pseudonym "Victoria Lucas" in 1963, the novel is semi-autobiographical, with the names of places and people changed. The book is often regarded as a roman à clef because the protagonist's descent into mental illness parallels Plath's own experiences with what may have been clinical depression or bipolar II disorder. Plath died by suicide a month after its first UK publication. The novel was published under Plath's name for the first time in 1967 and was not published in the United States until 1971, in accordance with the wishes of both Plath's husband, Ted Hughes, and her mother. The novel has been translated into nearly a dozen languages.

Sylvia Plath photo

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Variant: If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.
Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 8

Sylvia Plath photo

“How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or seen anybody die?”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath photo

“I wondered what I thought I was burying.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath photo

“I sank back in the gray, plush seat and closed my eyes. The air of the bell jar wadded round me and I couldn't stir.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath photo

“I had hoped, at my departure, I would feel sure and knowledgeable about everything that lay ahead -- after all, I had been "analyzed." Instead, all I could see were question marks.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath photo

“Only I wasn't steering anything, not even myself.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath photo

“I felt dull and flat and full of shattered visions.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath photo

“She stared at her reflection in the glossed shop windows as if to make sure, moment by moment, that she continued to exist.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath photo

“I don't know how long I kept at it…
I felt reasonably safe, streched out on the floor, and lay quite still.
It didn't seem to be summer any more”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath photo

“I opened the door and blinked out into the bright hall. I had the impression it wasn't night and it wasn't day, but some lurid third interval that had suddenly slipped between them and would never end.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath photo

“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

Sylvia Plath photo

“… it wouldn't have made one scrap of difference to me, because wherever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath photo

“I thought how strange it had never occurred to me before that I was only purely happy until I was nine years old.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 7

Sylvia Plath photo

“The silence drew off, baring the pebbles and shells and all the tatty wreckage of my life.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath photo

“That afternoon my mother had brought me the roses.
"Save them for my funeral," I'd said.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath photo

“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

Sylvia Plath photo

“Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them. But they were a part of me. They were my landscape.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath photo

“I wanted to crawl in between those black lines of print, the way you crawl through a fence, and go to sleep under that beautiful big green fig-tree.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Sylvia Plath photo

“The more hopeless you were, the further away they hid you.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar