#the munich mannequins
“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”–from “Mad Girl’s Love Song - A Villanelle”, 1954
“I made a model of you”
–from “Daddy”, 12 October 1962
“How we need another soul to cling to, another body to keep us warm. To rest and trust; to give your soul in confidence: I need this, I need someone to pour myself into.”
–The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, entry no. 25, 1950
“I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.”–from “Lady Lazarus”, 23-29 October 1962
“I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’”
–The Bell Jar, Chapter Eight, 1963
“It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water.”
–The Bell Jar, Chapter One, 1963
“Perfection is terrible, it cannot have children.”
–from “The Munich Mannequins”, 28 January 1963
“For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart–”–from “Lady Lazarus”, 23-29 October 1962
“Everything is the same but different.”
–The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, entry no. 132, 1952
“I am myself. That is not enough.”
–from “The Jailer”, 17 October 1962
“If you expect nothing from somebody you are never disappointed.”
–The Bell Jar, Chapter Five, 1963
“I desire the things which will destroy me in the end…“
–The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, entry no. 63, 1951
“I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”–from “Mad Girl’s Love Song - A Villanelle”, 1954
“I felt very empty, the way the eye of a tornado must feel, moving dully along in the middle of the surrounding hullabaloo.”
–The Bell Jar, Chapter One, 1963
“It is so much safer not to feel”
–The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, entry no. 155, 1952
“I am calm. I am calm. It is the calm before something awful“
–“Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices“, March 1962
“We should meet in another life, we should meet in air,
Me and you.”–from “Lesbos”, 18 October 1962
“Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.”–from “Lady Lazarus”, 23-29 October 1962
