Bell Jar Quotes:

When they asked me what I wanted to be I said I didn't know.

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Bell Jar, Said, Wanted

I wanted to be where nobody I knew could ever come.

- Sylvia Plath

source: Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.90, Hamilton Books

topic: Bell Jar, Wanted

The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it.

- Sylvia Plath

source: Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.41, Hamilton Books

topic: Trouble, Bell Jar, Inadequate

Not easy to state the change you made. If I'm alive now, I was dead, Though, like a stone, unbothered by it.

- Sylvia Plath

source: Sylvia Plath (2012). “Sylvia Plath Poems Chosen by Carol Ann Duffy”, p.51, Faber & Faber

topic: Alive, Stones, Bell Jar

The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.

- Sylvia Plath

source: Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.41, Hamilton Books

topic: Winning, Eras, Bell Jar, Coming To An End

There was a beautiful time.

- Sylvia Plath

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

topic: Beautiful, Bell Jar

I am made, crudely, for success.

- Sylvia Plath

source: Sylvia Plath (2013). “The Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.220, Anchor

topic: Bell Jar, Made

I couldn’t see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.

- Sylvia Plath

source: Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.61, Hamilton Books

topic: Looks, Bell Jar

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

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

topic: Men, Building Up, Bell Jar

I didn't know what I was doing in New York.

- Sylvia Plath

source: The Bell Jar ch. 1 (1963)

topic: New York, Junior Year, Bell Jar, College Days, I Know The Truth

I took a deep breath and listened to the old bray of my heart. I am. I am. I am.

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Inspirational, Life, Inspiring, Deep Listening, Deep Breath

If you expect nothing from anybody, you’re never disappointed.

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Expectations, Feminism, Classic, Bell Jar, Never Expect

I buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night. I couldn't see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.

- Sylvia Plath

source: Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.61, Hamilton Books

topic: Night, Darkness, Looks, Bell Jar

I felt very still and empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Moving, Eye, Feminism, Bell Jar

So I began to think maybe it was true that when you were married and had children it was like being brainwashed, and afterward you went about as numb as a slave in a totalitarian state.

- Sylvia Plath

source: Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.45, Hamilton Books

topic: Children, Thinking, Married, Bell Jar, Totalitarian State

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.

- Sylvia Plath

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

topic: July, Arrows, Rockets, Bell Jar

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant loosing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

- Sylvia Plath

source: 1963 The Bell Jar, ch.7.

topic: Wrinkles, Feet, Tree, Branching Out, Choosing One

To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream.

- Sylvia Plath

source: The Bell Jar ch. 20 (1963)

topic: Dream, Baby, Cadavers, Thermometers, Dead Baby

I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow.

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Beautiful, Shadow, World, Bell Jar

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Spring, Eye, World, Bewitched, Through My Eyes

My mother said the cure for thinking too much about yourself was helping somebody who was worse off than you.

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Mother, Thinking, Too Much, Bell Jar, Thinking Too Much

The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence.

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Depression, Silence, Feminism, Bell Jar

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Happiness, Nature, Air, Beautiful Nature, Mountain Air

If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell.

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Two, Hell, Neurotic, Bell Jar

But I wasn't sure. I wasn't sure at all. How did I know that someday―at college, in Europe, somewhere, anywhere―the bell jar, with its stifling distortions, wouldn't descend again?

- Sylvia Plath

source: Sylvia Plath (2016). “The Bell Jar”, p.124, Hamilton Books

topic: College, Europe, Bells, Bell Jar, Stifling

My garden is the most beautiful thing in the world.

- Josephine de Beauharnais

topic: Beautiful, Garden, World, Cast Away, Ballparks

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

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

topic: Depression, Glasses, Air, Bangkok, Bell Jar

Let me live, love and say it well in good sentences.

- Sylvia Plath

source: Sylvia Plath (2007). “The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath”, p.184, Anchor

topic: Writing, Feminism, Classic, Live Love, Bell Jar

There is something demoralizing about watching two people get more and more crazy about each other, especially when you are the only extra person in the room. It's like watching Paris from an express caboose heading in the opposite direction--every second the city gets smaller and smaller, only you feel it's really you getting smaller and smaller and lonelier and lonelier, rushing away from all those lights and excitement at about a million miles an hour.

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Crazy, Light, Opposites, Demoralizing, Bell Jar

There must be quite a few things that a hot bath won't cure, but I don't know many of them.

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Inspirational, Sad, Women, Inspirational Stress Relief, Stress Management

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

topic: Eye, Air, Jars, Bell Jar

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

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

topic: Book, Writing, School, Bell Jar

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

source: The Bell Jar ch. 20 (1963)

topic: Dream, Baby, Wall, Thermometers, Dead Baby

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

- Sylvia Plath

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

topic: Snow, Cadavers, Landscape, Thermometers, Bell Jar

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

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

topic: Depression, Tired, Way, Bell Jar

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

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Time Of My Life, Bell Jar

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

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

topic: Thinking, Sea, Shoes, Leather Shoes, Bell Jar

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

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

topic: Son, Men, Names, Bell Jar

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

topic: Eggs, Black, Cadavers, Bell Jar

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

topic: Beautiful, Death, Lying, Life After Death, Bell Jar

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

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

topic: Depression, Taken, Eye, Bell Jar, Picture Taken

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

topic: Truth, White, Blue, Relatable, Defenseless

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

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

topic: Distance, Men, Sight, Bell Jar

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

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

topic: Feet, Air, Bells, Bell Jar

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

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Friendship, Inspiring, Funny Best Friend, Old Friendship, Bell Jar

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

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

topic: Years, Nine, Strange, Bell Jar, Nine Years

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

- Sylvia Plath

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

topic: Europe, Gone, Lovers, Bell Jar

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

- Sylvia Plath

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

topic: Silence, Shells, Pebbles, Wreckage, Bell Jar

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

- Sylvia Plath

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

topic: Thinking, Turkeys, Necks, Bell Jar, Very Depressed

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

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Fall, Comforting, Fallen, Bell Jar

Don't let the wicked city get you down.

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Cities, Wicked, Bell Jar

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

- Sylvia Plath

topic: Born, Ritual, Bell Jar

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

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

topic: Space, Dumb, Mind, Bell Jar