The Bell Jar

"The silence depressed me. It wasn't the silence of silence. It was my own silence. I knew perfectly well the cars were making a noise, and the people in them and behind the lit windows of the buildings were making a noise, and the river was making a noise, but I couldn't hear a thing. The city hung in my window, flat as a poster, glittering and blinking, but it might as well not have been there at all, for the good it did me."

The Bell Jar, pp. 18-19
By Sylvia Plath
Published 1963