Writer Quotes by Sylvia Plath

We stayed at home to write, to consolidate our outstretched selves.

— Sylvia Plath

“How could I write about life when I'd never had a love affair or a baby or seen anybody die?”

— Sylvia Plath

Can a selfish egocentric jealous and unimaginative female write a damn thing worthwhile?

— Sylvia Plath

Every day one has to earn the name of 'writer' over again, with much wrestling.

— Sylvia Plath

And I identify too closely with my reading, with my writing.

— Sylvia Plath

I'm happier writing about doctors than I would have been being one.

— Sylvia Plath

Secretly, in studies and attics and schoolrooms all over America, people must be writing.

— Sylvia Plath

I write only because There is a voice within me That will not be still

— Sylvia Plath

I have done, this year, what I said I would: overcome my fear of facing a blank page day after day, acknowledging…

— Sylvia Plath

My wanting to write books annihilates the original root impulse that would have me bravely and blunderingly working on them.

— Sylvia Plath

The reason I haven't been writing in this book for so long is partly that I haven't had one decent coherent thought…

— Sylvia Plath

Do I like to write? Why? About what? Will I give up and say, "Living and feeding a man's insatiable guts and…

— Sylvia Plath

I think writers are the most narcissistic people. Well, I musn't say this, I like many of them, a great many of…

— Sylvia Plath

I think if I had done anything else I would like to have been a doctor. This is the sort of polar…

— Sylvia Plath

“Now I know how people can live without books, without college. (...)and so one goes on living, near the earth. At times…

— Sylvia Plath

Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing, which remark I guess shows I still don't have a pure motive (O it's-such-fun-I-just-can't-stop-who-cares-if-it's-published-or-read)…

— Sylvia Plath

At this rate, I'd be lucky if I wrote a page a day. Then I knew what the problem was. I needed…

— Sylvia Plath

I must discipline myself. I must be imaginative and create plots, knit motives, probe dialogue - rather than merely trying to record…

— Sylvia Plath

“Then I knew what the trouble was. I needed experience. How could I write about life when I'd never had a love…

— Sylvia Plath

Why am I obsessed with the idea I can justify myself by getting manuscripts published? Is it an escape-an excuse for any…

— Sylvia Plath

You ask me why I spend my life writing? Do I find entertainment? Is it worthwhile? Above all, does it pay? If…

— Sylvia Plath

The thing about writing is not to talk, but to do it; no matter how bad or even mediocre it is, the…

— Sylvia Plath

Some things are hard to write about. After something happens to you, you go to write it down, and either you over…

— Sylvia Plath

How can I tell Bob that my happiness streams from having wrenched a piece out of my life, a piece of hurt…

— Sylvia Plath

“Where was life? It dissipated, vanished into thin air, and my life stood weighed and found wanting because it had no ready-made…

— Sylvia Plath

“So I am led to one or two choices! Can I write? Will I write if I practice enough? How much should…

— Sylvia Plath

I feel terribly vulnerable and 'not-myself' when I'm not writing.

— Sylvia Plath

Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. That would fix a lot of people.

— Sylvia Plath

Nothing stinks like a pile of unpublished writing.

— Sylvia Plath

Writing, then, was a substitute for myself: if you don't love me, love my writing & love me for my writing. It…

— Sylvia Plath

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the…

— Sylvia Plath

I decided I would put off the novel until I had gone to Europe and had a lover, and that I would…

— Sylvia Plath

I am a writer... I am a genius of a writer; I have it in me. I am writing the best poems…

— Sylvia Plath

“Be stoic when necessary and write-you have seen a lot, felt deeply, and your problems are universal enough to be made meaningful-WRITE.”

— Sylvia Plath

If only a group of people were more important to me than the idea of a Novel, I might begin a novel.

— Sylvia Plath

I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't…

— Sylvia Plath

But I am I now; and so many other millions are so irretrievably their own special variety of 'I' that I can…

— Sylvia Plath

“I must write about the things of the world with no glazing.” She fought doggedly against the great suction into her own…

— Sylvia Plath