Sylvia Quotes

1. "Pentru prima oara mi-e frica ca nu te-am stiut suficient si acum nu stiu daca sa fiu bun sau rau, ca sa ajung iar langa tine atunci cand mi-o veni ceasul. Sylvia, te-am iubit neconditionat, fara sa stiu daca ai fost buna sau rea, fara sa stiu sau sa ma intreb ce faceai cand nu eram impreuna, fara sa iti cer sa ma iubesti la fel. Dar tu ai facut-o. M-ai iubit la fel."
Author: Adrian Telespan

2. "...to her all books were the same and, as with her subjects, she felt a duty to approach them without prejudice...Lauren Bacall, Winifred Holtby, Sylvia Plath - who were they? Only be reading could she find out."
Author: Alan Bennett

3. "I have never read Sylvia Plath. My mother has never read Virginia Woolf. In general, we have stayed out of one another's way like this."
Author: Alison Bechdel

4. "Living in filth was regarded by great numbers of holy men, who set an example to the Church and to society, as an evidence of sanctity. St. Jerome and the Breviary of the Roman Church dwell with unction on the fact that St. Hilarion lived his whole life long in utter physical uncleanliness; St. Athanasius glorifies St. Anthony because he had never washed his feet; St. Abraham's most striking evidence of holiness was that for fifty years he washed neither his hands nor his feet; St. Sylvia never washed any part of her body save her fingers; St. Euphraxia belonged to a convent in which the nuns religiously abstained from bathing. St. Mary of Egypt was emninent for filthiness; St. Simon Stylites was in this respect unspeakable - the least that can be said is, that he lived in ordure and stench intolerable to his visitors."
Author: Andrew Dickson White

5. "Like Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is both the beauty and unique nature of her storytelling. With brilliance and courage, the author's brave and candid chronicle travels where no other memoir about mental illness and addiction has gone before. The Third Sunrise is an incredible triumph and Natalie Jeanne Champagne is without a doubt the most important new voice in this genre."
Author: Andy Behrman

6. "Sylvia had given him a scalding lecture, the gist of it being that whatever a woman enjoyed wearing was feminine and anything she didn't enjoy wearing wasn't, and if he was too stubborn and old fashioned to understand that, he could go and soak his head in a bucket of cold water. He hadn't quite forgiven her yet for saying they would have to look hard to find a bucket big enough to fit his head in to, but he admired the sass behind the remark."
Author: Anne Bishop

7. "[Short Talk on Sylvia Plath] Did you see her mother on television? She said plain, burned things. She said I thought it an excellent poem but it hurt me. She did not say jungle fear. She did not say jungle hatred wild jungle weeping chop it back chop it. She said self-government she said end of the road. She did not say humming in the middle of the air what you came for chop."
Author: Anne Carson

8. "PLEASE TELL ME YOU KNOW OF SYLVIA PLATHConventions bleed my soulsqueeze me oldwear me grey like a headstone in transit.It's tradition and form—fear of the unknown—driving me deadin tight spaces darkly.I cry aloudbut who can hearwhen I stand alonein the middle of an art show…."
Author: Chila Woychik

9. "Wars, wars, wars': reading up on the region I came across one moment when quintessential Englishness had in fact intersected with this darkling plain. In 1906 Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible for British colonies, had been honored by an invitation from Kaiser Wilhelm II to attend the annual maneuvers of the Imperial German Army, held at Breslau. The Kaiser was 'resplendent in the uniform of the White Silesian Cuirassiers' and his massed and regimented infantry...reminded one more of great Atlantic rollers than human formations. Clouds of cavalry, avalanches of field-guns and—at that time a novelty—squadrons of motor-cars (private and military) completed the array. For five hours the immense defilade continued. Yet this was only a twentieth of the armed strength of the regular German Army before mobilization.Strange to find Winston Churchill and Sylvia Plath both choosing the word 'roller,' in both its juggernaut and wavelike declensions, for that scene."
Author: Christopher Hitchens

10. "I must have wanton Poets, pleasant wits,Musitians, that with touching of a stringMay draw the pliant king which way I please:Musicke and poetrie is his delight,Therefore ile have Italian maskes by night,Sweete speeches, comedies, and pleasing showes,And in the day when he shall walke abroad,Like Sylvian Nimphes my pages shall be clad,My men like Satyres grazing on the lawnes,Shall with their Goate feete daunce an antick hay.Sometime a lovelie boye in Dians shape,With haire that gilds the water as it glides,Crownets of pearle about his naked armes,And in his sportfull hands an Olive tree,To hide those parts which men delight to see,Shall bathe him in a spring, and there hard by,One like Actaeon peeping through the grove,Shall by the angrie goddesse be transformde,And running in the likenes of an Hart,By yelping hounds puld downe, and seeme to die.Such things as these best please his majestie,My lord."
Author: Christopher Marlowe

11. "Who knew that you would be The One," I smile, "which I guess makes me your Trinity.""My Amidala.""Your Zira.""My Sylvia.""Your..." I scour my brain, trying to remember some other great sci-fi love interest."Ha! I'm your Saphira," I settle back smugly, only for Trevor to start laughing."Saphira is a dragon."
Author: Cindy C. Bennett

12. "In the country, I stopped being a person who, in the words of Sylvia Boorstein, startles easily. I grew calmer, but beneath that calm was a deep well of loneliness I hadn't known was there. ... Anxiety was my fuel. When I stopped, it was all waiting for me: fear, anger, grief, despair, and that terrible, terrible loneliness. What was it about? I was hardly alone. I loved my husband and son. I had great friends, colleagues, students. In the quiet, in the extra hours, I was forced to ask the question, and to listen carefully to the answer: I was lonely for myself. [p. 123]"
Author: Dani Shapiro

13. "Ian and Sylvia, who, when you got right down to it, were essentially country and western singers. I just recorded his Four Strong Winds. It's a wonderful song."
Author: Dave Van Ronk

14. "A veces, cuando algún profesor termina la explicación y pregunta si ha quedado alguna duda, Sylvia tiene ganas de levantar la mano y decir sí, ¿podría volver a empezar desde el principio?, pero desde el principio del principio, desde que nacemos, porque aún no he comprendido nada en estos casi dieciséis años de vida."
Author: David Trueba

15. "I spoke to Sylvia. "Do you think this is a good life?"
Author: Donald Barthelme

16. "Two wives despaired of him,' he said. ‘When he got engaged to Sylvia, she made it a condition that he should take the cure at Zurich. And it worked. He came back in three months a different man. And he hasn't touched a drop since, even though Sylvia walked out on him.' ‘Why did she do that?'Well, poor Charlie got rather a bore when he stopped drinking. But that's not really the point of the story."
Author: Evelyn Waugh

17. "He wouldn't write a letter because he couldn't without beginning it 'Dear Sylvia' and ending it 'Yours sincerely' or 'truly' or 'affectionately.' He's that sort of precise imbecile. I tell you he's so formal he can't do without all the conventions there are and so truthful he can't use half of them."
Author: Ford Madox Ford

18. "Father Consett sighed.'I told you this was an evil place,' he said. 'In the deep forests. She'd not have such evil thoughts in another place.' Mrs Satterthwaite said:'I'd rather you didn't say that, Father. Sylvia would have evil thoughts in any place.''Sometimes,' the priest said, 'at night I think I hear the claws of evil things scratching on the shutters. This was the last place in Europe to be Christianised. Perhaps it wasn't ever even Christianised and they're here yet.'Mrs Satterthwaite said:'It's all very well to talk like that in the day-time. It makes the place seem romantic. But it must be near one at night. And things are bad enough as it is.''They are,' Father Consett said. 'The devil's at work."
Author: Ford Madox Ford

19. "His sister-in-law Sylvia represented for him unceasing, unsleeping activities of a fantastic kind."
Author: Ford Madox Ford

20. "I love Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. I also love more cerebral poets like H.D. and Emily Dickinson. My parents subscribed to a monthly poetry periodical, and as a teenager I was introduced to Denise Levertov, who was an influence."
Author: Francesca Lia Block

21. "I know what you're thinking. ‘How the hell does this broke ass piece of trailer trash know words like caveat,' right? Well guess what? I've read every single book on the New York Times list of 'Top 100 Literary Classics,' not to mention every Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath or Bronte sisters' book ever written. And fuck you very much for judging me, by the way."
Author: Isobel Irons

22. "The longer we spent on Tarawa the more Sylvia and I came to realize that to live on Tarawa is to experience a visceral form of bipolar disorder. There is the ecstatic high, when you find yourself swept away in a lagoonside maneaba rumbling to the frenzied singing and dancing of hundreds of rapturous islanders. And there are the crushing lows, when you succumb to a listless depression, brought about by the unyielding heat, sporadic sickness, pitiless isolation, food shortages, and the realization that so much of what ails Tarawa, the overpopulation and all its attendant health and social problems, need not be as bad as it is."
Author: J. Maarten Troost

23. "So what do you think?' He asked, holding up the book.‘I think Salinger is a closet paedophile,' I replied placidly and was surprised and comforted by this minuscule, acidic, bitter Sylvia Plath like mocking, sniping tone that had crept into my voice. ‘The main character Seymour is a fully grown man and a pervert who befriends young girls with his storytelling and swimming, just to get close enough to groom them in preparation for the inevitable sexual assault he lusts after. You might have noticed for example in A Perfect Day For Bananafish he grabs the young girls-'‘Sybil.'‘He grabs Sybil's ankles while lying on the beach and again when he pushes her in the water,' I continued. ‘He goes too far when he kisses the bottom of her foot which makes even a four-year-old yell out in fear, knowing a line had been crossed. Frustrated Seymour walks away and goes back to his hotel where he kills himself in shame."
Author: J.D. Gallagher

24. "Ted: A fucking good poem is a weapon. It's-- and not like a--a popgun or something.- It's a bomb.It's like a bloody big bomb. Sylvia: That's why they make childrenlearn them in school.They don't want them messing aboutwith them on their own. I mean, just imagineif a sonnet went off accidentally. Boom."
Author: John Brownlow

25. "Lady Sylvia McCordle: Mr Weissman -- Tell us about the film you're going to make.Morris Weissman: Oh, sure. It's called "Charlie Chan In London". It's a detective story.Mabel Nesbitt: Set in London?Morris Weissman: Well, not really. Most of it takes place at a shooting party in a country house. Sort of like this one, actually. Murder in the middle of the night, a lot of guests for the weekend, everyone's a suspect. You know, that sort of thing.Constance: How horrid. And who turns out to have done it?Morris Weissman: Oh, I couldn't tell you that. It would spoil it for you.Constance: Oh, but none of us will see it."
Author: Julian Fellowes

26. "Maybe if I could slip into Sylvia's mind, sort out the spices in her rack, alphabetize them and dust them off. Maybe then I'd understand how it's the little things that pull you under."
Author: Kelli Russell Agodon

27. "I'm hopefully touring with Colin Baker next year in Perfect Strangers. I have performed with Sylvia Simms in poetry and music evenings. I would love to do those for the rest of my career - they are so fun and witty."
Author: Louise Jameson

28. "I was born in Boston, Massachusetts on May 16, 1923, the only child of Joel and Sylvia Miller."
Author: Merton Miller

29. "Last night at Bingo, Sylvia won the last prize. 'What am I going to do with a mermaid?" "Learn to swim in the murkiest water, reinvent yourself," the mermaid said #149"
Author: Monique Duval

30. "This isn't over, Sylvia. I'll leave you now, but I'm watching. I will not let that bastard hurt you." I said this just as I reached the door. As she shut the door I heard a strangled whisper, "No, you're perfectly capable of doing that on your own."
Author: N.M. Facile

31. "Sylvia's dark eyes widened. "You are more than you appear to be""Yes. I am a monster of Darkness, a beast," he agreed with her. Her lips tilted up. "Can a beast weep in sorrow? Does darkness have the capacity to feel loneliness? I think not."
Author: P.C. Cast

32. "Big production, no story, as they say around the movie lots. I guess Sylvia is happy enough, though not necessarily with me. In our circle that's not too important. There's always something to do if you don't have to work or consider the cost. It's no real fun, but the rich don't know that. They never had any. They never want anything very hard except maybe somebody else's wife and that's a pretty pale desire compared to the way a plumber's wife wants new curtains for the living room."
Author: Raymond Chandler

33. "Why should the Mass of Sainte Cécile bend my thoughts wandering among caverns whose walls blaze with ragged masses of virgin silver? What was it in the roar and turmoil of Broadway at six o'clock that flashed before my eyes the picture of a still Breton forest where sunlight filtered through spring foliage and Sylvia bent, half curiously, half tenderly, over a small green lizard, murmuring: "To think that this also is a little ward of God!"
Author: Robert W. Chambers

34. "Sylvia: Stay right where you are.The Doctor: You can't come with me.Wilfred: Well you're not leaving me with her.Sylvia: Dad!The Doctor: Fair enough.Sylvia yelling at the TARDIS: Come back here! Come back here, I said! Come back!Donna: Are you shouting at thin air?Sylvia: Yes. Possibly. Yes.-Doctor Who"
Author: Russell T Davies

35. "Sylvia grabs my sleeve. "He's a looker.""I know. The problem is, he knows it, too."
Author: Simone Elkeles

36. "I fret for Sylvia.She appears anchoredto the idea of sinking,which is silly when she so clearlysoars above almost everyone."
Author: Stephanie Hemphill

37. "It's rather splendid to think of all those great men and women who appear to have presented symptoms that allow us to describe them as bipolar. Whether it's Hemingway, Van Gogh... Robert Schumann has been mentioned... Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath... some of them with rather grim ends."
Author: Stephen Fry

38. "I don't mean that creative people are somehow finer, or more sensitive, and thus have finer, more sensitive nervous breakdowns - you can save that horseshit for the Sylvia Plath worshipers. It's just that creative people have creative breakdowns."
Author: Stephen King

39. "I can still feel that leap of enthusiasm, and real joy, at the prospect of finally getting out to the beach, and running around. But probably the most important thing, to me, aside from just the freedom of it and the power of it, was the kind of creatures that you could see along the beach, that you can't find anywhere else." - Sylvia Earle"
Author: Sylvia A. Earle

40. "Some of my most precious moments of insight have been those in which I have seen clearly that gratitude is the only possible response." (Sylvia Boorstein, from "You Don't Look Buddhist")"
Author: Sylvia Boorstein

41. "Could you stand still please?' Sylvia says in an irritated voice. If she had sweaty balls and an almost-boner she wouldn't be so judgmental. Am I right, or am I right?"
Author: Tara Sivec

42. "I've been very influenced by folklore, fairy tales, and folk ballads, so I love all the classic works based on these things -- like George Macdonald's 19th century fairy stories, the fairy poetry of W.B. Yeats, and Sylvia Townsend Warner's splendid book The Kingdoms of Elfin. (I think that particular book of hers wasn't published until the 1970s, not long before her death, but she was an English writer popular in the middle decades of the 20th century.)I'm also a big Pre-Raphaelite fan, so I love William Morris' early fantasy novels.Oh, and "Lud-in-the-Mist" by Hope Mirrlees (Neil Gaiman is a big fan of that one too), and I could go on and on but I won't!"
Author: Terri Windling

43. "Sylvia Day delivers readers to a fantasy world as unique as it is erotic! Ms. Day is an up-and-coming talent in the world of erotic fiction. [on Pleasures of the Night]"
Author: Toni Blake

Sylvia Quotes Pictures