Mari > Mari's Quotes

“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

“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

“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

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

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

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

--from "Death & Co.”
― 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

“And I, stepping from this skin
Of old bandages, boredoms, old faces

Step to you from the black car of Lethe,
Pure as a baby.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“My bones hold a stillness, the far
Fields melt my heart.”
― 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

“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

“Its snaky acids kiss.
It petrifies the will. These are the isolate, slow faults
That kill, that kill, that kill.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“Stasis in darkness.
Then the substanceless blue”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“Paralytic

It happens. Will it go on? ----
My mind a rock,
No fingers to grip, no tongue,
My god the iron lung

That loves me, pumps
My two
Dust bags in and out,
Will not

Let me relapse
While the day outside glides by like ticker tape.
The night brings violets,
Tapestries of eyes,

Lights,
The soft anonymous
Talkers: 'You all right?'
The starched, inaccessible breast.

Dead egg, I lie
Whole
On a whole world I cannot touch,
At the white, tight

Drum of my sleeping couch
Photographs visit me ----
My wife, dead and flat, in 1920 furs,
Mouth full of pearls,

Two girls
As flat as she, who whisper 'We're your daughters.'
The still waters
Wrap my lips,

Eyes, nose and ears,
A clear
Cellophane I cannot crack.
On my bare back

I smile, a buddha, all
Wants, desire
Falling from me like rings
Hugging their lights.

The claw
Of the magnolia,
Drunk on its own scents,
Asks nothing of life.”
― 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

“Nigger-eye
Berries cast dark
Hooks --

Black sweet blood mouthfuls,
Shadows.”
― Sylvia Plath, Ariel

“• Dan: I love you.
• Alice: Where?
• Dan: What?
• Alice: Show me. Where is this 'love'? I can't see it, I can't touch it, I can't feel it. I can hear it, I can hear some words but I can't do anything with your easy words.”
― Patrick Marber, Closer: A Play

“Have you ever seen a human heart? It looks like a fist, wrapped in blood! Go fuck yourself!”
― Patrick Marber, Closer: A Play

“I know who you are. I love you. I love everything about you that hurts.”
― Patrick Marber, Closer: A Play

“I think you owe me something for deceiving me so exquisitely.”
― Patrick Marber, Closer: A Play

“What's so great about the truth? Try lying for a change, it's the currency of the world.”
― Patrick Marber, Closer: A Play

“She was...disarming.”
― Patrick Marber, Closer: A Play

“We arrive with our...'baggage' and for a while they're brilliant, they're 'Baggage Handlers.' We say, 'Where's your baggage?' They deny all knowledge of it...'They're in love'...they have none. Then...just as you're relaxing...a Great Big Juggernaut arrives...with their baggage. It Got Held Up. One of the greatest myths men have about women is that we overpack.”
― Patrick Marber, Closer: A Play

“Deception is brutal, I'm not pretending otherwise.”
― Patrick Marber, Closer: A Play

“Pleasure and self destruction...The perfect poison.”
― Patrick Marber, Closer: A Play

“That's the most stupid expression in the world. 'I fell in love'—as if you had no choice. There's a moment, there's always a moment; I can do this, I can give in to this or I can resist it. I don't know when your moment was but I bet there was one.”
― Patrick Marber, Closer: A Play

“It struck me as pretty ridiculous to be called Mr. Darcy and to stand on your own looking snooty at a party. It's like being called Heathcliff and insisting on spending the entire evening in the garden, shouting "Cathy" and banging your head against a tree.”
― Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary

“But often life asks much of you, and you either honor life by answering with all your heart, or you cower your way into your grave.”
― James Clemens, Hinterland

“Crows don’t take from you,” Dean said. “They give your soul wings.”
― Caitlin Kittredge, The Iron Thorn

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”
― Marilyn Monroe