Sylvia Plath Quotes

There is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and of action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is when the garment of make-believe by which pious hands have hidden its uglier features is stripped off.

I believe in facing reality. But only because I don't like turning my back on it.

I don't believe in dressing up reality. I don't believe in using makeup to make things look smoother.

I am determined to live without illusions. I want to look at reality straight. Without hiding.

I'm just writing about people. People are dark and complicated. I'm trying to tell the truth; that's all that I do.

I write about what I know.

I come here not as a polished politician but as a woman who has had her fair share of life's knocks.

Platitudes are safe, because they're easy to wink at, but truth is something else again.

I like to portray things as close to the bone as possible.

I feel that if I'm writing a book, it has to be an honest book: it has to say what I believe to be the truth, so that's kind of warts and all.

You cannot hide yourself from any situation.

Writing my first book, 'Beautiful,' was the time that I was able to write the truth of it - that I was despairing at times, that I got depressed and felt like I couldn't cope. Writing became about being honest.

Strength, to me, is about exposing vulnerabilities and foibles and facts and people that are honest.

It takes strength and courage to admit the truth.

You have to be quite brave to write about something that you honestly feel and think.

I will never again go to people under false pretenses even if it is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people.

Maybe the hardest thing in writing is simply to tell the truth about things as we see them.

Autobiography is not important. Authenticity is important. The writer must fire herself through the text, be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements. I believe there is always exposure, vulnerability, in the writing process, which is not to say it is either confessional or memoir. Simply, it is real.

Have the courage to face the truth

Some books make us dream, others bring us face to face with reality, but what matters most to the author is the honesty with which a book is written.

One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.

The true writer must write not the acceptable but the true.

Write words you’re willing to burn at the stake for. Write words you’d believe in even if the rest of the world didn’t.

Literature is subservient to nothing but truth.

If you would be a poet, write living newspapers. Be a reporter from outer space, filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor who believes in full disclosure and has a low tolerance for bullshit.