Ariel Quotes

“Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I have a call.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted
to lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“LADY LAZARUS

I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it--

A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot

A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.

Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?--

The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.

Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me

And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.

This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.

What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see

Them unwrap me hand and foot--
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies

These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,

Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.

The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut

As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.

I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I've a call.

It's easy enough to do it in a cell.
It's easy enough to do it and stay put.
It's the theatrical

Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:

'A miracle!'
That knocks me out.
There is a charge

For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart--
It really goes.

And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood

Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.

I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby

That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.

Ash, ash--
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there--

A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.

Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.

Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.

-- written 23-29 October 1962”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.

--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

--from "Daddy", written 12 October 1962”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“No day is safe from news of you.

--from "The Rival", written July 1961”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time―
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one grey toe
Big as a Frisco seal”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes
Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.

--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“Is it the sea you hear in me,
Its dissatisfactions?
Or the voice of nothing, that was you madness?

--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“The blood jet is poetry,
There is no stopping it.

--from "Kindness", written 1 February 1963”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“I know the bottom, she says. I know it with my great tap root:
It is what you fear.
I do not fear it: I have been there.

--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“O love, how did you get here?

--from "Nick and the Candlestick", written 29 October 1962”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly, as the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands. I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free——
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets.
It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them
Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet.

--from "Tulips", written 18 March 1961”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“Love is a shadow.
How you lie and cry after it

--from "Elm", written 19 April 1962”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“If the moon smiled, she would resemble you.
You leave the same impression
Of something beautiful, but annihilating.
Both of you are great light borrowers.
Her O-mouth grieves at the world; yours is unaffected,
And your first gift is making stone out of everything.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“What is so real as the cry of a child?
A rabbit's cry may be wilder
But it has no soul.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“The moon is my mother. She is not sweet like Mary.
Her blue garments unloose small bats and owls.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.

--From the poem "Lady Lazarus", written 23-29 October 1962”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“Clouds pass and disperse.
Are those the faces of love, those pale irretrievables?
Is it for such I agitate my heart?”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“You are the one. Solid the spaces lean on, envious. You are the baby in the barn.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love

I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“The frost makes a flower,
the dew makes a star

--from "Death & Co.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“Over your body the clouds go
High, high and icily
And a little flat, as if they

Floated on a glass that was invisible.
Unlike swans,
Having no reflections;

Unlike you,
With no strings attached.
All cool, all blue. Unlike you

You, there on your back,
Eyes to the sky.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“The moon is no door. It is a face in its own right,
White as a knuckle and terribly upset.
It drags the sea after it like a dark crime; it is quiet
With the O-gape of complete despair. I live here.

--from "The Moon and the Yew Tree", written 22 October 1961”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel