...we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
Sylvia PlathRead
From the night Buddy Willard kissed me and said I must go out with a lot of boys, he made me feel I was much more sexy and experienced than he was and that everything he did like hugging and kissing and petting was simply what I made him feel like doing out of the blue, he couldn’t help it and didn’t know how it came about. Now I saw he had only been pretending all this time to be so innocent.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the complexities of attraction and the dynamics of innocence in romantic interactions.
In this quote, Sylvia Plath articulates the awakening of self-awareness in the context of romantic relationships. The speaker realizes that the affection displayed by Buddy Willard may stem from her influence on him, revealing the intricate interplay between perceived innocence and the reality of desires and experiences in relationships. This realization leads to a deeper understanding of one's own allure and the true nature of the other person's actions.
In practice
This quote can be used during a discussion on the complexities of young love.
...we shall board our imagined ship and wildly sail among sacred islands of the mad till death shatters the fabulous stars and makes us real.
The hardest thing, I think, is to live richly in the present, without letting it be tainted & spoiled out of fear for the future or regret for a badly-managed past.
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 dominates my life, floods it.
You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?
I keep wanting to crawl back into the womb.
It's the living, the eating, the sleeping that everyone needs. Ideas don't matter so much after all. My three best friends are Catholic. I can't see their beliefs, but I can see the things they love to do on earth. When you come right down to it, I do believe in the freedom of the individual.
I've been accused of being cold, snobbish, distant. Those who know me well know that I’m nothing of the sort. If anything, the opposite is true. But is it too much to ask to want to protect your private life, your inner feelings? Lots of things touch me and I don’t want to be indiscreet.
Put together all the existing families and you have society. It is as simple as that. Whatever kind of training took place in the individual family will be reflected in the kind of society that these families create.
I don't think it's different to be a black girl in England than it is to be a black girl from America. We all collectively share in a pain of displacement and not feeling like we quite belong in places.
Community is the fruit of our capacity to make the interests of others more important than our own.
I've always been Sarah. My gender identity has always existed. I've always been a woman. Gay people aren't straight before they come out as gay, and transgender people are who they are before they come out and transition.
What’s the point of being a magician if you can’t wave your wand and make the people you care about feel better?
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