It’s true you could have just googled “quotes by Sylvia Plath” and came up with this list on your own. However, you didn’t—because you probably didn’t realize how heart-seizing and truth-finding her work is, particularly for young, female artists who are trying to find their space in this world. She can be a bit stigmatized because of the depression that caused her to eventually take her life, but Plath is one of my favorite authors. Even if she isn’t one of yours, I hope the following quotes resonate with you. If not, I hope you get a laugh out of the strange relatability she has.
From The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath:
- “Perhaps some day I'll crawl back home, beaten, defeated. But not as long as I can make stories out of my heartbreak, beauty out of sorrow.”
I repeat this quote when I wonder why I decided to become an English major. Goodbye regular paycheck, hello beauty out of sorrow. - “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. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in my life. And I am horribly limited.”
I say this every time I add a minor to my course plan (will I ever graduate?) - “I am still so naïve; I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don’t ask me who I am. A passionate, fragmentary girl, maybe?"
I say, as I write my Tinder bio. - “I have never found anybody who could stand to accept the daily demonstrative love I feel in me, and give back as good as I give.”
When I remember the barista’s name at Starbucks, but he still asks me for mine after 5 days of the same matcha latte at nine a.m. - “The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”
I tell my professor during office hours after he remarks on my “extremely unconventional—I think you should change it” thesis.
From The Bell Jar - “That’s one of the reasons I never wanted to get married. The last thing I wanted was infinite security and to be the place an arrow shoots off from. I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket”
How I convince myself that I do not want to marry a doctor, and I’m really into business majors (stocks are exciting!) - “I couldn’t see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.”
Before my 9 am lecture on the other side of campus. - “I was supposed to be having the time of my life.”
As I leave the Phi Psi party at 12 a.m., Friday night.
