“I can't deceive myself that out of the bare stark realization that no matter how enthusiastic you are, no matter how sure that character is fate, nothing is real, past or future, when you are alone in your room with the clock ticking loudly into the false cheerful brilliance of the electric light. And if you have no past or future which, after all, is all that the present is made of, why then you may as well dispose of the empty shell of present and commit suicide.”

American poet and author

Sylvia Plath was an American poet and author. She helped shape confessional poetry and is best known for work that brought private experience into sharp literary focus. Her books include The Colossus and Other Poems, Ariel, and The Bell Jar, a semi-autobiographical novel published shortly before her death. Her Collected Poems appeared in 1981 with previously unpublished work, and that collection won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1982, awarded to her posthumously.