The Bell Jar

by Sylvia Plath

I liked looking on at other people in crucial situations. If there was a road accident or a street fight or a baby pickled in a laboratory jar for me to look at, I’d stop and look so hard I never forgot it.

I certainly learned a lot of things I never would have learned otherwise this way, and even when they surprised me or made me sick I never let on, but pretended that’s the way I knew things were all the time.

The silence depressed me. It wasn’t the silence of silence. It was my own silence.

There must be quite a few things a hot bath won’t cure,

I never feel so much myself as when I’m in a hot bath.

I guess I feel about a hot bath the way those religious people feel about holy water.