By Taylor Jasmine | On August 20, 2017 | Updated August 23, 2022 | Comments (0)
Sylvia Plath’s only published novel, The Bell Jar, was originally published in England under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas in 1963. That was the same year in which she committed suicide. Here we’ll explore quotes from The Bell Jar, an influential modern novel that took mental illness head on in a chronicle both terrifying and tender.
Born in 1932, Plath, the gifted American poet, struggled with chronic depression and made no pretense of concealing her pain in her writings. Her poetry is considered part of the frank and revelatory “confessional movement.”
The Bell Jar wasn’t published in the U.S. until 1971, in accordance with the wishes of Ted Hughes, to whom she had been married at the time of her death (though they were separated at the time). From the 1971 Harper and Row edition: Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On August 13, 2017 | Updated November 15, 2020 | Comments (0)
Memory plays a central role in fiction — as it does in life. Think of those who lose their memory; the very essence of the self is stolen. “Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it,” wrote L.M. Montgomery in The Story Girl.
Here, Virginia Woolf, Daphne Du Maurier, Eudora Welty, Rebecca West, and Mary McCarthy offer up lovely thoughts on memory that come from both works of fiction and memoir. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On August 8, 2017 | Updated January 29, 2026 | Comments (0)
Octavia Estelle Butler (1947 – 2006) broke ground in the white male-dominated genre of science fiction as a Black woman. This selection of quotes by Octavia E. Butler reflects her wise and prescient thoughts on writing and human nature.
The New York Times described her as a writer “whose evocative, often troubling novels explore far-reaching issues of race, sex, power, and ultimately, what it meant to be human.”
After publishing some short stories, Butler’s first novel was Patternmaster (1976). It was the first in what would become a four-volume series. Central to these novels are Patternists, people with telepathic powers. But it was Kindred (1979) that put Octavia Butler on the literary map. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On August 7, 2017 | Updated September 18, 2023 | Comments (0)
Gertrude Stein (1874 – 1946) had a unique place in twentieth century literature. Following is a selection of Gertrude Stein quotes, offering a window into her mind — some perplex, others delight, and some are a marriage of both.
Though some consider her writing incoherent, others view it as a singular voice, that had never been seen before or since.
In addition to poetry and novels, Stein also wrote plays, operas, and gave many lectures. Her experiments in prose, which may have originated with automatic writings, were highly influential. Some critics considered them “cubism in literature.” Read More→
By Emma Ward | On July 30, 2017 | Updated November 14, 2022 | Comments (0)
Rumer Godden (1907 – 1998) grew up in colonial India and was educated in England. This selection of quotes by Rumer Godden illustrate her continual quest for meaning.
As a young woman, Godden settled in Calcutta to teach dance and write.
Her first novel, Black Narcissus, was published in 1939 to immediate acclaim and became a bestseller. This was followed by a succession of novels drawing upon her life in exotic settings. Read More→
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