The Bell Jar quotes

New York was…

New York was bad enough.

I was supposed…

I was supposed to be having the time of my life.

Only I wasn’t…

Only I wasn’t steering anything, not even myself.

The city hung…

The city hung in the window […] but it might just as well not have been there at all.

I never intended…

I never intended to get married.

Buddy Willard was…

Buddy Willard was a hypocrite.

It sounded just…

It sounded just like the sort of drug a man would invent

What a man wants…

What a man wants is a mate and what a woman wants is infinite security’ and ‘what a man is is an arrow into the future and what a woman is is the place the arrow shoots off from.

I saw my life…

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree

I saw myself sitting…

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose.

A man’s world…

A man’s world is different from a woman’s world

I couldn’t stand the idea

I couldn’t stand the idea of a woman having to live a single pure life and a man being able to have a double life.

After I had children…

After I had children, I would feel differently, I wouldn’t want to write poems anymore

I’m so glad…

I’m so glad they’re (the Rosenburgs) going to die

She wants…

She wants Jay Cee said wittily to be everything.

It seemed…

It seemed to have taken my spirit with it.

Dodo interested…

Dodo interested me in spite of myself.

My mother turned…

My mother turned from a foggy log into a slumbering, middle aged woman.

My mother sighed…

My mother sighed. Doctor Gordon cost twenty five dollars an hour.

I knew my baby…

I knew my baby wasn’t like that […] I knew you’d decide to be all right again.

How could I write…

How could I write about life when I’d never had a love affair or a baby?

As if the sea…

As if the sea could make a decision for me.

The more hopeless you were…

The more hopeless you were, the further away they hid you.

I would be sitting under…

I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar

Everybody would…

Everybody would know about me, of course.

I wonder…

I wonder who you’ll marry now

I wished I had…

I wished I had a mother like Jay Cee… my own mother wasn’t much help