If they substituted the word 'Lust' for 'Love' in the popular songs it would come nearer the truth.

How frail the human heart must be―a mirrored pool of thought.

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

If I didn't think, I'd be much happier; if I didn't have any sex organs, I wouldn't waver on the brink of nervous emotion and tears all the time.

If you love her", I said, "you'll love somebody else someday.

What did my fingers do before they held him? What did my heart do, with its love? From " Three Women: A Poem for Three Voices", 1962

So much working, reading, thinking, living to do! A lifetime is not long enough.

Ever since I was small I loved feeling somebody comb my hair. It made me go all sleepy and peaceful.

People or stars Regard me sadly, I disappoint them. From the poem "Sheep in Fog", 2 December 1962, 28 January 1963

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

I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn’t taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers’ sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.

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.

What horrifies me most is the idea of being useless: well-educated, brilliantly promising, and fading out into an indifferent middle age.

I love my rejection slips. They show me I try.

Is anyone anywhere happy?

I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me.

How can you be so many women to so many strange people, oh you strange girl?

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.

I am too pure for you or anyone. From the poem "Fever 103 ", 20 October 1962

What is my life for and what am I going to do with it? I don't know and I'm afraid. I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want.

I am sure there are things that can't be cured by a good bath but I can't think of one.

The trouble about jumping was that if you didn't pick the right number of storeys, you might still be alive when you hit bottom.

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.

I have taken a pill to kill The thin Papery feeling.

It seemed silly to wash one day when I would only have to wash again the next. It made me tired just to think of it.

Is it the sea you hear in me? Its dissatisfactions? Or the voice of nothing, that was your madness? Love is a shadow. How you lie and cry after it.

I know pretty much what I like and dislike; but please, don't ask me who I am.

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.

Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through.

It was my first big chance, but here I was, sitting back and letting it run through my fingers like so much water.

Please don’t expect me to always be good and kind and loving. There are times when I will be cold and thoughtless and hard to understand.

Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labeled “enemy?

I have suffered the atrocity of sunsets.

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

The thought that I might kill myself formed in my mind coolly as a tree or a flower.

The blood of love welled up in my heart with a slow pain.

I knew you'd decide to be all right again.

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

Character is fate.

You are a dream; I hope I never meet you.

I am jealous of those who think more deeply, who write better, who draw better, who ski better, who look better, who live better, who love better than I.

I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I'd never seen before in my life.

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?

I must learn more about these people―try to understand them, put myself in their place. No, instead I am so busy keeping my head above water that I scarcely know who I am, much less who anyone else is.

Whenever I'm sad I'm going to die, or so nervous I can't sleep, or in love with somebody I won't be seeing for a week, I slump down just so far and then I say: 'I'll go take a hot bath.

Wear your heart on your skin in this life.

I must be lean & write & make worlds beside this to live in.

I may never be happy, but tonight I am content.

All I want is blackness. Blackness and silence.