Parenting Quotes by Sylvia Plath

Mother of otherness, Eat me.

— Sylvia Plath

“Your shelled bed I remember. Father, this thick air is murderous. I would breathe water.”

— Sylvia Plath

That afternoon my mother had brought me the roses. "Save them for my funeral," I'd said.

— Sylvia Plath

“The more hopeless you were, the farther away they hid you.”

— Sylvia Plath

It was my last act of love (first words to her mother in the hospital after her first major suicide attempt)

— Sylvia Plath

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

— Sylvia Plath

I need the reality of other people, work, to fulfill myself. Must never become a mere mother and housewife.

— Sylvia Plath

“Mother of otherness, Eat me. --from "Poem for a Birthday - Who", written 1960”

— Sylvia Plath

When I was learning to creep, my mother set me down on the beach to see what I thought of it. I…

— Sylvia Plath

“Buddy hugged his father,and promptly, with a dreadful brightness, came over to me and held out his had.I shook it. It felt…

— Sylvia Plath

“My mother smiled. "I know my baby wasn't like that." I looked at her. "Like what?" "Like those awful people. Those awful…

— Sylvia Plath

The journey over the bridge had unnerved me. The river water passed me by like an untouched drink. I suspected that even…

— Sylvia Plath

My mother had taught shorthand and typing to support us since my father died, and secretly she hated it and hated him…

— Sylvia Plath

“And this is how it stiffens, my vision of that seaside childhood. My father died, we moved inland. Whereon those nine first…

— Sylvia Plath

My mother's face floated to mind, a pale, reproachful moon, at her last and first visit to the asylum since my twentieth…

— Sylvia Plath

... you looked around and saw everybody either married or busy and happy and thinking and being creative, and you felt scared,…

— Sylvia Plath

“Day now, night now, at head, side, feet, They stand their vigil in gowns of stone, Faces blank as the day I…

— Sylvia Plath

I do not love; I do not love anybody except myself. That is a rather shocking thing to admit. I have none…

— Sylvia Plath

“Doctor Nolan had said, quite bluntly, that a lot of people would treat me gingerly, or even avoid me, like a leper…

— Sylvia Plath

Why honey, don't you want to get dressed?" My mother took care never to tell me to do anything. She would only…

— Sylvia Plath

Mother believed that I should have an enormous amount of sleep, and so I was never really tired when I went to…

— Sylvia Plath

“I had hoped to make her strong and healthy, and now she may be too weak herself after this slow death, like…

— Sylvia Plath

“Who" The month of flowering’s finished. The fruit’s in, Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth. October’s the month for storage. The…

— Sylvia Plath

“Elaine sat on the breezeway in an old yellow nightgown of her mother's waiting for something to happen.' [...] I sat like…

— Sylvia Plath

“I hated men because they didn’t stay around and love me like a father: I could prick holes in them & show…

— Sylvia Plath