Bell Jar Quotes - Page 2

• 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

  Eye, Air, Bells

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.94, Hamilton Books

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• What do you have in mind after you graduate?" What I always thought I had in mind was getting some big scholarship to graduate school or a grant to study all over Europe, and then I thought I'd be a professor and write books of poems or write books of poems and be an editor of some sort. Usually I had these plans on the tip of my tongue. "I don't really know," I heard myself say. I felt a deep shock, hearing myself say that, because the minute I said it, I knew it was true.

  Sylvia Plath

  Book, Writing, School

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.19, Hamilton Books

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• A bad dream.To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.A bad dream.I remembered everything.I remembered the cadavers and Doreen and the story of the fig-tree and Marco's diamond and the sailor on the Common and Doctor Gordon's wall-eyed nurse and the broken thermometers and the negro with his two kinds of beans and the twenty pounds I gained on insulin and the rock that bulged between sky and sea like a grey skull.Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, should numb and cover them.But they were part of me. They were my landscape

  Sylvia Plath

  Dream, Baby, Wall

  The Bell Jar ch. 20 (1963)

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

  Sylvia Plath

  Snow, Cadavers, Landscape

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.122, Hamilton Books

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• I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I should any more. This made me sad and tired. Then I wondered why I couldn't go the whole way doing what I shouldn't, the way Doreen did, and this made me even sadder and more tired.

  Sylvia Plath

  Depression, Tired, Way

  Sylvia Plath (2008). “The Bell Jar”, p.24, Faber & Faber

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• I was supposed to be having the time of my life.

  Sylvia Plath

  Time Of My Life, Supposed To Be

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.3, Hamilton Books

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• I had removed my patent leather shoes after a while, for they foundered badly in the sand. It pleased me to think they would be perched there on the silver log, pointing out to sea, like a sort of soul-compass, after I was dead.

  Sylvia Plath

  Thinking, Sea, Shoes

  Sylvia Plath (2008). “The Bell Jar”, p.113, Faber & Faber

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• I collected men with interesting names. I already knew a Socrates. He was tall and ugly and intellectual and the son of some big Greek movie producer in Hollywood, but also a Catholic, which ruined it for both of us.

  Sylvia Plath

  Son, Men, Names

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.28, Hamilton Books

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• It was like the first time i saw a cadaver. For weeks afterward the cadavers head, or what was left of it - floated up behind my eggs and bacon at breakfast and in the face of Buddy Willard, who was responsible for my seeing it in the first place, and pretty soon I felt as though I were carrying that cadavers head around with me on a string, like some black, noseless balloon stinking of vinegar.

  Sylvia Plath

  Eggs, Black, Cadavers

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• There I went again, building up a glamorous picture of a man who would love me passionately the minute he met me, and all out of a few prosy nothings.

  Sylvia Plath

  Men, Building Up, Minutes

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.29, Hamilton Books

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• Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no tomorrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.

  Oscar Wilde

  Life, Beautiful, Death

  Oscar Wilde (2007). “The Collected Works of Oscar Wilde”, p.205, Wordsworth Editions

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• I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at me too closely the tears would fly out of my eyes and the sobs would fly out of my throat and I’d cry for a week. I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.

  Sylvia Plath

  Depression, Taken, Eye

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.53, Hamilton Books

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• But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get.

  Sylvia Plath

  Truth, Blue, Somewhere Else

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.75, Hamilton Books

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• I would catch sight of some flawless man off in the distance, but as soon as he moved closer I immediately saw he wouldn’t do at all.

  Sylvia Plath

  Distance, Men, Sight

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.44, Hamilton Books

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• All the heat and fear had purged itself. I felt surprisingly at peace. The bell jar hung suspended a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.

  Sylvia Plath

  Feet, Air, Bells

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.111, Hamilton Books

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• There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.

  Sylvia Plath

  Friendship, Inspiring, Funny Best Friend

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.24, Hamilton Books

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• 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

  Years, Nine, Strange

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.40, Hamilton Books

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• I had decided I would put off the novel until I had gone to Europe and had a lover.

  Sylvia Plath

  Europe, Gone, Lovers

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.62, Hamilton Books

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

  Sylvia Plath

  Silence, Shells, Pebbles

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.86, Hamilton Books

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• The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed.

  Sylvia Plath

  Thinking, Turkeys, Necks

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.36, Hamilton Books

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• The floor seemed wonderfully solid. It was comforting to know I had fallen and could fall no farther.

  Sylvia Plath

  Fall, Comforting, Knows

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.25, Hamilton Books

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• Don't let the wicked city get you down.

  Sylvia Plath

  Cities, Wicked

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.22, Hamilton Books

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• There ought, I thought, to be a ritual for being born twice - patched, retreaded and approved for the road.

  Sylvia Plath

  Born, Ritual, Ought

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.126, Hamilton Books

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• I felt dumb and subdued. Every time I tried to concentrate, my mind glided off, like a skater, into a large empty space, and pirouetted there, absently.

  Sylvia Plath

  Space, Dumb, Mind

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.74, Hamilton Books

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• But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defenseless that I couldn't do it.

  Sylvia Plath

  Suicide, White, Skins

  Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.75, Hamilton Books

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