The Journals of Sylvia Plath

self-and-identity

• I do not know who I am, where I am going—and I am the one who has to decide the answers to these hideous questions.

  JSP-013

• Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh.

  JSP-005

• You wonder how to act, and how to be—and you wonder about values and attitudes. In the relativism and despair, in the waiting for the bombs to begin.

  JSP-006

ambition-and-status

• I am jealous of men—a dangerous and subtle envy … born of the desire to be active and doing, not passive and listening.

  JSP-008

• I must pour my energies through the direction and force of my mate … I desire the things which will destroy me in the end.

  JSP-002

calling

• I am tempted to write a poem … This second is life. And when it is gone, it is dead.

  JSP-015