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I hated these visits, because I kept feeling the visitors measuring my fat and stringy hair against what I had been and what they wanted me to be, and...more

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I didn’t want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn’t know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at m...more

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I am helpless as the sea at the end of her string. I am restless. Restless and useless. I, too, create corpses.

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It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative--which ever is running at the moment dominate...more

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I’ll never speak to God again.

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Poppies in JulyLittle poppies, little hell flames,Do you do no harm?You flicker. I cannot touch you.I put my hands among the flames. Nothing burns.And...more

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I could feel the tears brimming and sloshing in me like water in a glass that is unsteady and too full.

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LADY LAZARUSI have done it again.One year in every tenI manage it--A sort of walking miracle, my skinBright as a Nazi lampshade,My right footA paperwe...more

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They had to call and callAnd pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.--From the poem "Lady Lazarus", written 23-29 October 1962

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I am terrified by this dark thingThat sleeps in me;All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

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I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned upand be utterly empty.How free it is, you have no idea how free - The peacefulne...more

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I didn't want my picture taken because I was going to cry. I didn't know why I was going to cry, but I knew that if anybody spoke to me or looked at m...more

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because wherever I sat—on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok—I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my o...more

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The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.

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I thought the most beautiful thing in the world must be shadow, the million moving shapes and cul-de-sacs of shadow. There was shadow in bureau drawer...more