

“What is an "instant" death anyway? How long is an instant? Is it one second? Ten? The pain of those seconds must have been awful as her heart burst and her lungs collapsed and there was no air and no blood to her brain and only raw panic. What the hell is instant? Nothing is instant. Instant rice takes five minutes, instant pudding an hour. I doubt that an instant of blinding pain feels particularly instantaneous.”
― Looking for Alaska
― Looking for Alaska

“I felt myself melting into the shadows like the negative of a person I'd never seen before in my life.”
― The Bell Jar
― The Bell Jar

“Someday no one will remember that she ever existed, I wrote in my notebook, and then, or that I did. Because memories fall apart, too. And then you're left with nothing, left not even with a ghost but with its shadow. In the beginning, she had haunted me, haunted my dreams, but even now, just weeks later, she was slipping away, falling apart in my memory and everyone else's, dying again.”
― Looking for Alaska
― Looking for Alaska

“Oh God, Alaska, I love you. I love you," and the Colonel whispered, "I'm so sorry, Pudge. I know you did," and I said, "No. Not past tense." She wasn't even a person anymore, just flesh rotting, but I loved her present tense.”
― Looking for Alaska
― Looking for Alaska

“I’m so pathetically intense. I just can’t be any other way.”
― The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2: 1956-1963
― The Letters of Sylvia Plath Vol 2: 1956-1963
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