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Although I Love A Rich Life, I Hate An Overcrowded Life. I Believe In Rumination And Lose Half The Beauty Of All Things When I Am Deprived Of The Time To Ruminate.

-Anais Nin

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Although I Love A

Anais Nin

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Although I Love A Rich Life, I Hate An Overcrowded Life. I Believe In Rumination And Lose Half The Beauty Of All Things When I Am Deprived Of The Time To Ruminate.

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Had I Not Created My Whole World, I Would Certainly Have Died In Other People’s.

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It Is The Function Of Art To Renew Our Perception. What We Are Familiar With We Cease To See. The Writer Shakes Up The Familiar Scene, And, As If By Magic, We See A New Meaning In It.

I Am Lonely, Yet Not Everybody Will Do. I Don't Know Why, Some People Fill The Gaps And Others Emphasize My Loneliness. In Reality Those Who Satisfy Me Are Those Who Simply Allow Me To Live With My ''idea Of Them.

To Mistake Ugliness For Reality Is One Of The Frauds Of The Realistic School [of Writing]. A Hunger For The Unknown And An Aspiration Toward Beauty Were Inseparable From Civilization. In America The Word Art Was Distorted To Mean Artificial.

I Was Thinking Of My Patients, And How The Worst Moment For Them Was When They Discovered They Were Masters Of Their Own Fate. It Was Not A Matter Of Bad Or Good Luck. When They Could No Longer Blame Fate, They Were In Despair.

Someone Told Me The Delightful Story Of The Crusader Who Put A Chastity Belt On His Wife And Gave The Key To His Best Friend For Safekeeping, In Case Of His Death. He Had Ridden Only A Few Miles Away When His Friend, Riding Hard, Caught Up With Him, Saying 'you Gave Me The Wrong Key!

Don't Say Anything, Because I See That You Understand Me, And I Am Afraid Of Your Understanding. I Have Such A Fear Of Finding Another Like Myself, And Such A Desire To Find One! I Am So Utterly Lonely, But I Also Have Such A Fear That My Isolation Be Broken Through, And I No Longer Be The Head And Ruler Of My Universe. I Am In Great Terror Of Your Understanding By Which You Penetrate Into My World; And Then I Stand Revealed And I Have To Share My Kingdom With You.

I Am Quite Wiling To Confide Entirely In Human Being, Except That At Some Moment Or Another Human Beings Get Preoccupied, Moody, Busy, Inattentive, And There Come An End To The Interest, And This Never Happens In A Journal!

We Are Like Sculptors, Constantly Carving Out Of Others The Image We Long For, Need, Love Or Desire, Often Against Reality, Against Their Benefit, And Always, In The End, A Disappointment, Because It Does Not Fit Them.

The Leaf Fall Of His Words, The Stained Glass Hues Of His Moods, The Rust In His Voice, The Smoke In His Mouth, His Breath On My Vision Like Human Breath Blinding A Mirror.

You Are So Terribly Nimble, So Clever. I Distrust Your Cleverness. You Make A Wonderful Pattern, Everything Is In Its Place, It Looks Convincingly Clear, Too Clear. And Meanwhile, Where Are You? Not On The Clear Surface Of Your Ideas, But You Have Already Sunk Deeper, Into Darker Regions, So That One Only Thinks One Has Been Given All Your Thoughts, One Only Imagines You Have Emptied Yourself In That Clarity. But There Are Layers And Layers - You're Bottomless, Unfathomable. Your Clearness Is Deceptive. You Are The Thinker Who Arouses Most Confusion In Me, Most Doubt, Most Disturbance.

If You Are Terribly Truthful, The Ground Will Always Move From Under You, And You Will Have To Shift With The Constantly Shifting Truth.

Because History Is Only An Aggregate Of Personal Hostilities, Personal Prejudices, Personal Blindness And Irrationality, There Are Times When We Have To Live Against It.

The Preoccupation Of The Novelist: How To Capture The Living Moments, Was Answered By The Diary. You Write While You Are Alive. You Do Not Preserve Them In Alcohol Until The Moment You Are Ready To Write About Them.

Live In The Moment

Shame Is The Lie Someone Told You About Yourself.

Everything But Happiness Is Neurosis.

The Way To Recognize A Dead Word Is That It Exudes Boredom.

... Only Love Begets Love.

It Is Difficult To Live With The Pure. They Do Not Condemn You; They Forgive You. This Forgiveness Is More Terrible Than A Judgment.

I Want To Love You Wildly. I Don’t Want Words, But Inarticulate Cries, Meaningless, From The Bottom Of My Most Primitive Being, That Flow From My Belly Like Honey. A Piercing Joy, That Leaves Me Empty, Conquered, Silenced.

I Want To Live Darkly And Richly In My Femaleness.

Empowering Women

I Don't Hear Your Words: Your Voice Reverberates Against My Body Like Another Kind Of Caress, Another Kind Of Penetration. I Have No Power Over Your Voice. It Comes Straight From You Into Me. I Could Stuff My Ears And It Would Find Its Way Into My Blood And Make It Rise.

I Believe The Lasting Revolution Comes From Deep Changes In Ourselves Which Influence Our Collective Life.

To The Woman With The Least Intelligence, There Must Come, At Some Time Or Other, The Realization That Housework Is Animal Work And That There Are Other Occupations In The World A Thousand Times More Refined, More Enriching, For Which She Is Also Suited And To Which She Has A Right.

I Made No Resolutions For The New Year. The Habit Of Making Plans, Of Criticizing, Sanctioning And Molding My Life, Is Too Much Of A Daily Event For Me.

No One Was Ever Born Without That Light Or Flame Of Life. Some Event, Some Person Stifles Or Drowns It Altogether. I Was Always Tempted To Resuscitate Such Men By My Own Joyousness Or Luminosity.when I Break Glasses In A Night Club, As The Russians Do, When My Unconscious Breaks Out In Wild Rebellions, It Is Against Life Which Has Crippled These Idealistic, Romantic Men. I Respect These Men, Cold, Pure, Faithful, Devoted, Moral, Delicate, Sensitive, And Unequal To Life, More Than I Respect The Tough-minded Ones Who Return Three Blows To One Received, Who Kill Those Who Hurt Them.

What You Burnt, Broke, And Tore Is Still In My Hands. I Am The Keeper Of Fragile Things And I Have Kept Of You What Is Indissoluble.

To Lie, Of Course, Is To Engender Insanity.

I Would Like To Have Your Sureness. I Am Waiting For Love, The Core Of A Woman's Life." Don't Wait For It," I Said. "create A World, Your World. Alone. Stand Alone. And Then Love Will Come To You, Then It Comes To You. It Was Only When I Wrote My First Book That The World I Wanted To Live In Opened To Me.

Travel Is Seeking The Lost Paradise. It Is The Supreme Illusion Of Love.

The Secret Of Joy Is The Mastery Of Pain.

The Self Is Merely The Lens Through Which We See Others And The World.

We Travel, Some Of Us Forever, To Seek Other States, Other Lives, Other Souls.

Ordinary Life Does Not Interest Me. I Seek Only The High Moments. I Am In Accord With The Surrealists, Searching For The Marvelous.

You Marry The Day You Realize The Human Defects Of Your Love.

In Each Studio There Is A Human Being Dressed In The Full Regalia Of His Myth Fearing To Expore A Vulnerable Opening, Spreading Not His Charms But His Defences, Plotting To Disrobe, Somewhere Along The Night-- His Body Without The Aperture Of The Heart Or His Heart With A Door Closed To His Body. Thus Keeping One Compartment For Refuge, One Uninvaded Cell.

I Believe That In Judging Our Actions We Are More Severe Than Professional Judges. We Judge Not Only Our Actions, But Our Thoughts, Our Intentions, Our Secret Curses, Our Hidden Hate.

When She Closed Her Eyes She Felt He Had Many Hands, Which Touched Her Everywhere, And Many Mouths, Which Passed So Swiftly Over Her, And With A Wolflike Sharpness, His Teeth Sank Into Her Fleshiest Parts. Naked Now, He Lay His Full Length Over Her. She Enjoyed His Weight On Her, Enjoyed Being Crushed Under His Body. She Wanted Him Soldered To Her, From Mouth To Feet. Shivers Passed Through Her Body.

The Role Of The Writer Is Not To Say What We Can All Say, But What We Are Unable To Say. Most Of The Writing Today Which Is Called Fiction Contains Such A Poverty Of Language, Such Triteness, That It Is A Shrunken, Diminished World We Enter, Poorer And More Formless Than The Poorest Cripple Deprived Of Ears And Eyes And Tongue. The Writer's Responsibility Is To Increase, Develop Our Senses, Expand Our Vision, Heighten Our Awareness And Enrich Our Articulateness.

We Speak Of The Masculine And The Feminine, But They Are The Wrong Labels. It Is Really More A Matter Of Poetry Versus Intellectualization.

She Had Lost Herself Somewhere Along The Frontier Between Her Inventions, Her Stories, Her Fantasies And Her True Self. The Boundaries Had Become Effaced, The Tracks Lost, She Had Walked Into Pure Chaos, And Not A Chaos Which Carried Her Like The Galloping Of Romantic Riders In Operas And Legends, But Which Suddenly Revealed The Stage Props: A Papier-mâché Horse.

One Handles Truths Like Dynamite.

I Gathered Poets Around Me And We All Wrote Beautiful Erotica. As We Were Condemned To Focus Only On Sensuality, We Had Violent Explosions Of Poetry. Writing Erotica Became A Road To Sainthood Rather Than To Debauchery.

I Am Only Responsible For My Own Heart, You Offered Yours Up For The Smashing My Darling. Only A Fool Would Give Out Such A Vital Organ

Don't Let One Cloud Obliterate The Whole Sky.

Positive Thinking

This Diary Is My Kief, Hashish And Opium Pipe. This Is My Drug And My Vice.

In Every Relationship, Sooner Or Later, There Is A Court Scene. Accusations, Counter-accusations, A Trial, A Verdict.

We Also Write To Heighten Our Own Awareness Of Life... We Write To Taste Life Twice, In The Moment, And In Retrospection... We Write To Be Able To Transcend Our Life, To Reach Beyond It...to Teach Ourselves To Speak With Others, To Record The Journey Into The Labyrinth. We Write To Expand Our World When We Feel Strangled, Or Constricted, Or Lonely... When I Don't Write, I Feel My World Shrinking... I Feel I Lose My Fire And My Color.

I Love Man As Creator, Lover, Husband, Friend, But Man The Father I Do Not Trust. I Do Not Believe In Man As Father. I Do Not Trust Man As Father.

Life Is A Process Of Becoming, A Combination Of States We Have To Go Through. Where People Fail Is That They Wish To Elect A State And Remain In It. This Is A Kind Of Death.

One May Gain One Truth At The Expense Of Another.

I Love Your Silences, They Are Like Mine.

Willingness To Explore Everything Is A Sign Of Strength. The Weak Ones Have Prejudices. Prejudices Are A Protection.

Age Does Not Protect You From Love. But Love, To Some Extent, Protects You From Age.

There Is An Ugliness In Being Paid For Work One Does Not Like.

Notes Fly So Much Farther Than Words. There Is No Other Way To Reach The Infinite.

When I First Met Him, He Did Not Care If A Friend Did Not Fit Into His World, Because At That Time His World Had Not Been Born Yet.

Perfection Is Static, And I Am In Full Progress.

Woman Does Not Forget She Needs The Fecundator, She Does Not Forget That Everything That Is Born Of Her Is Planted In Her.

The Woman Will Sit Eternally In The Tall Black Armchair. I Will Be The One Woman You Will Never Have...excessive Living Weighs Down The Imagination: We Will Not Live, We Will Only Write And Talk To Swell The Sails.

Passion Gives Me Moments Of Wholeness.

I Cannot Concentrate All My Friendship On Any Single One Of My Friends Because No One Is Complete Enough In Himself.

Cute Best Friend

I Was Stirred Only Like A Leaf In The Wind, That Is All. . .

Leaves In The Wind

I Am A Winged Creature Who Is Too Rarely Allowed To Use Its Wings. Ecstasies Do Not Occur Often Enough.

I Did Not Feel Drawn To Huxley. He Was Beautiful Physically But Again Without Vibrations Or Sensory Antennae... And I Had A Painful Impression Of A Psychic Blindness. With All His Science And Knowledge, In The Mystic World He Blundered.

Our Life Is Composed Greatly From Dreams, From The Unconscious, And They Must Be Brought Into Connection With Action. They Must Be Woven Together.

Collective Unconscious

We Efface An Hour By Passionate Love, Without Twists, Without Aftertaste. When It Is Finished, It Is Not Finished, We Lie Still In Each Other's Arms Lulled By Our Love, By Tenderness -- Sensuality In Which The Whole Being Can Participate.

The Monster I Kill Every Day Is The Monster Of Realism. The Monster Who Attacks Me Every Day Is Destruction. Out Of The Duel Comes The Transformation. I Turn Destruction Into Creation Over And Over Again.

My Mission, Should I Choose To Accept It, Is To Find Peace With Exactly Who And What I Am. To Take Pride In My Thoughts, My Appearance, My Talents, My Flaws And To Stop This Incessant Worrying That I Can’t Be Loved As I Am.

Things Aren't The Way They Are, They're The Way You Are

Stories Are The Only Enchantment Possible, For When We Begin To See Our Suffering As A Story, We Are Saved.

Jeanne, I Fell Asleep Among The Paintings, Where I Could Sit For Many Days Worshipping Your Portrait. I Fell In Love With Your Portrait, Jeanne, Because It Will Never Change. I Have Such A Fear Of Seeing You Grow Old, Jeanne, I Fell In Love With An Unchanging You That Will Never Be Taken Away From Me. I Was Wishing You Would Die, So That No One Could Take You Away From Me, And I Would Love The Painting Of You As You Would Look Eternally.

One Always, Sooner Or Later, Comes Upon A City Which Is An Image Of One's Inner Cities. Fez Is An Image Of My Inner Self. ... The Layers Of The City Of Fez Are Like The Layers And Secrecies Of The Inner Life. One Needs A Guide. ... There Were In Fez, As In My Life, Streets Which Led Nowhere, Impasses Which Remained A Mystery.

I'm Sick Of My Own Romanticism!

It Is In The Movements Of Emotional Crisis That Human Beings Reveal Themselves Most Accurately.

Introspection Is A Devouring Monster.

We Are Going To The Moon That Is Not Very Far. Man Has So Much Farther To Go Within Himself.

Now That I Am Moving, I Am Afraid. Where Am I Going?

The Inner Chambers Of The Soul Are Like The Photographer's Darkroom. Like A Laboratory. One Cannot Stay There All The Time Or It Becomes The Solitary Cell Of The Neurotic.

I Really Believe That If I Were Not A Writer, Not A Creator, Not An Experimenter, I Might Have Been A Very Faithful Wife. I Think Highly Of Faithfulness. But My Temperament Belongs To The Writer, Not To The Woman

Reality Doesn’t Impress Me. I Only Believe In Intoxication, In Ecstasy, And When Ordinary Life Shackles Me. I Escape, One Way Or Another. No More Walls.

The Role Of A Writer Is Not To Say What We All Can Say, But What We Are Unable To Say.

Inspirational Life

What Is Love But Acceptance Of The Other, Whatever He Is.

The Same Chemicals Were Used In The Cooking As Were Used On The Composition Of Her Own Being: Only Those Which Caused The Most Violent Reaction, Contradiction, And Teasing, The Refusal To Answer Questions But The Love Of Putting Them, And All The Strong Spices Of Human Relationship Which Bore A Relation To Black Pepper, Paprika, Soybean Sauce, Ketchup And Red Peppers.

Secrets. Need To Disguise. The Novel Was Born Of This.

If All Of Us Acted In Unison As I Act Individually There Would Be No Wars And No Poverty. I Have Made Myself Personally Responsible For The Fate Of Every Human Being Who Has Come My Way.

I Say Quotations Are Literary. They Are Good Only When Dealing With Ideas, Not With Experience. Experience Should Be Pure, Unique.

I Palliate The Sufferings Of Others. Yes I See Myself As Softening The Blows, Dissolving Acids, Neutralizing Poisons, Every Moment Of The Day. I Try To Fulfill The Wishes Of Others, To Perform Miracles. I Exert Myself Performing Miracles.

Suffering Of Others

Either One Fails In One's Art Or In One's Life.

I Only Believe In Fire. Life. Fire. Being Myself On Fire I Set Others On Fire. Never Death. Fire And Life.

He Does Not Need Opium. He Has The Gift Of Reverie.

Myself ... Is Merely An Instrument To Connect Life And A Myth

All Unlived Emotions Turn To Inanity.

Truth Is Something Which Can't Be Told In A Few Words. Those Who Simplify The Universe Only Reduce The Expansion Of Its Meaning.

It Is My Secrecy Which Makes You Unhappy, My Evasions, My Silences. And So I Have Found A Solution. Whenever You Get Desperate With My Mysteries, My Ambiguities, Here Is A Set Of Chinese Puzzle Boxes. You Have Always Said That I Was Myself A Chinese Puzzle Box. When You Are In The Mood And I Baffle Your Love Of Confidences, Your Love Of Openness, Your Love Of Sharing Experiences, Then Open One Of The Boxes. And In It You Will Find A Story, A Story About Me And My Life. Do You Like This Idea? Do You Think It Will Help Us To Live Together?

Jazz Is The Music Of The Body. The Breath Comes Through Brass. It Is The Body's Breath, And The Strings' Wails And Moans Are Echoes Of The Body's Music. It Is The Body's Vibrations Which Ripple From The Fingers. And The Mystery Of The Withheld Theme, Known To Jazz Musicians Alone, Is Like The Mystery Of Our Secret Life. We Give To Others Only Peripheral Improvisations.

He Understands My Pity For His Ridiculous, Humiliating Physical Necessity.

The Bed Must Be A Beautiful Place, Not Only Because You Make Love There But Because You Dream There As Well.

A Trite Word Is An Overused Word Which Has Lost Its Identity Like An Old Coat In A Second-hand Shop. The Familiar Grows Dull And We No Longer See, Hear, Or Taste It.

When You Make A World Tolerable For Yourself, You Make A World Tolerable For Others.

There Is A Resemblance Between Men And Women, Not A Contrast. When A Man Begins To Recognize His Feeling, The Two Unite. When Men Accept The Sensitive Side Of Themselves, They Come Alive.

We Sit On The Kitchen Exchanging These Diabolical Outgrowths Of Overfertile Minds.

Sometimes I Think Of Paris Not As A City But As A Home.

He Had A Mania For Washing And Disinfecting Himself. . . . For Him The Only Danger Came From The Microbes That Attacked The Body. He Had Not Studied The Microbe Of Conscience Which Eats Into The Soul.

I Believe One Writes Because One Has To Create A World In Which One Can Live.

I Have Seen Romanticism Outlast The Realistic. I Have Seen Men Forget The Beautiful Women They Have Possessed, Forget The Prostitutes, And Remember The First Woman They Idolized, The Woman They Could Never Have. The Woman Who Aroused Them Romantically Holds Them.

I Want To Live Darkly And Richly In My Femaleness. I Want A Man Lying Over Me, Always Over Me. His Will, His Pleasure, His Desire, His Life, His Work, His Sexuality The Touchstone, The Command, My Pivot. I Don’t Mind Working, Holding My Ground Intellectually, Artistically; But As A Woman, Oh, God, As A Woman I Want To Be Dominated

Anxiety Is Love's Greatest Killer. It Makes Others Feel As You Might When A Drowning Man Holds On To You. You Want To Save Him, But You Know He Will Strangle You With His Panic.

Everything With Me Is Either Worship And Passion Or Pity And Understanding. I Hate Rarely, Though When I Hate. I Hate Murderously.

I Will Not Be Just A Tourist In The World Of Images, Just Watching Images Passing By Which I Cannot Live In, Make Love To, Possess As Permanent Sources Of Joy And Ecstasy.

You Must Not Fear, Hold Back, Count Or Be A Miser With Your Thoughts And Feelings. It Is Also True That Creation Comes From An Overflow, So You Have To Learn To Intake, To Imbibe, To Nourish Yourself And Not Be Afraid Of Fullness. The Fullness Is Like A Tidal Wave Which Then Carries You, Sweeps You Into Experience And Into Writing.

The City Was Asleep On Its Right Side And Shaking With Violent Nightmares. Long Puffs Of Snoring Came Out Of The Chimneys. Its Feet Were Sticking Out Because The Clouds Did Not Cover It Altogether. There Was A Hole In Them And The White Feathers Were Falling Out. The City Had Untied All Its Bridges Like So Many Buttons To Feel At Ease. Wherever There Was A Lamplight The City Scratched Itself Until It Went Out.

Strange, Isn't It, That No Chemical Will Give A Human Being The Iridescence That Illusions Have Given Them? Give Me Your Hat.

We Do Not See The World As It Is. We See The Word As We Are.

He, Who Had Done More Than Any Human Being To Draw Her Out Of The Caves Of Her Secret, Folded Life, Now Threw Her Down Into Deeper Recesses Of Fear And Doubt. The Fall Was Greater Than She Had Ever Known, Because She Had Ventured So Far Into Emotion And Had Abandoned Herself To It.

She Acquired The Certainty Of The Expansion Of Time By Depth Of Emotion, Range And Infinite Multiplicity Of Experience.

The Unknown Was My Compass. The Unknown Was My Encyclopedia. The Unnamed Was My Science And Progress.

There Are Books Which We Read Early In Life, Which Sink Into Our Consciousness And Seem To Disappear Without Leaving A Trace. And Then One Day We Find, In Some Summing-up Of Our Life And Put Attitudes Towards Experience, That Their Influence Has Been Enormous.

Stations And Airports Are Rehearsals For Separations By Death.

[in The]..curious Way That My Idealism Has Been Mixed With My Fatalism, So That I Can Possess The Soul Of A Dreamer And That Of A Cynic At The Same Time......i Possess A Power Of Magic...[to] Destroy The Balance Of A Well-designed Destiny With My Diabolical Mind.

Perhaps The Only Magician We Have Is The Artist.

Is Devotion To Others A Cover For The Hungers And The Needs Of The Self, Of Which One Is Ashamed? I Was Always Ashamed To Take. So I Gave. It Was Not Virtue. It Was A Disguise.

She Had Acquired Some Of His Gypsy Ways, Some Of His Nonchalance, His Bohemian Indiscipline. She Had Swung With Him Into The Disorders Of Strewn Clothes, Spilled Cigarette Ashes, Slipping Into Bed All Dressed, Falling Asleep Thus, Indolence, Timelessness...a Region Of Chaos And Moonlight. She Liked It There.

I Sleep With My Feet On Moss Carpets, My Branches In The Cotton Of The Clouds.

There Is No Denying That We Are Suffering From A Collective Neurosis And The Novel Which Does Not Face This Is Not A Novel Of Our Time.

Paris-new York, The Two High Tension Magnetic Poles Between Life, Life Of The Senses, Of The Spirit In Paris, And Life In Action In New York.

I Walk Ahead Of Myself In Perpetual Expectancy Of Miracles.

The Poet Is One Who Is Able To Keep The Fresh Vision Of The Child Alive.

We Don't See Things As They Are, We See Them As We Are." Life Shrinks Or Expands In Proportion To One's Courage "people Living Deeply Have No Fear Of Death.

Inspirational Life

Life, Religion And Art All Converge In Bali. They Have No Word In Their Language For 'artist' Or 'art.' Everyone Is An Artist.

The Earth Is Heavy And Opaque Without Dreams.

All The Art Of Analysis Consists In Saying A Truth Only When The Other Person Is Ready For It, Has Been Prepared For It By An Organic Process Of Gradation And Evolution.

Our Love Of Each Other Was Like Two Long Shadows Kissing Without Hope Of Reality.

We Don't Have A Language For The Senses. Feelings Are Images, Sensations Are Like Musical Sounds.

When I Am Most Deeply Rooted, I Feel The Wildest Desire To Uproot Myself.

Our Culture Made A Virtue Of Living Only As Extroverts. We Discouraged The Inner Journey, The Quest For A Center. So We Lost Our Center And Have To Find It Again.

The Writer Is The Duelist Who Never Fights At The Stated Hour, Who Gathers Up An Insult, Like Another Curious Object, A Collector's Item, Spreads It Out On His Desk Later, And Then Engages In A Duel With It Verbally. Some People Call It Weakness. I Call It Postponement. What Is Weakness In The Man Becomes A Quality In The Writer. For He Preserves, Collects What Will Explode Later In His Work. That Is Why The Writer Is The Loneliest Man In The World; Because He Lives, Fights, Dies, Is Reborn Always Alone; All His Roles Are Played Behind A Curtain. In Life He Is An Incongruous Figure.

The Source Of Sexual Power Is Curiosity, Passion. You Are Watching Its Little Flame Die Of Asphyxiation. Sex Does Not Thrive On Monotony. Without Feeling, Inventions, Moods, No Surprises In Bed. Sex Must Be Mixed With Tears, Laughter, Words, Promises, Scenes, Jealousy, Envy, All Of The Spices Of Fear, Foreign Travel, New Faces, Novels, Stories, Dreams, Fantasies, Music, Dancing, Opium, Wine.

America Hates The Artist. It Will Not Admit: The Artist Is My Soul And I Want To Kill Off My Soul.

The Source Of Sexual Power Is Curiosity, Passion. You Are Watching Its Little Flame Die Of Asphyxiation.

New York Has An Electronic Heart.

I Prefer By Far The Warmth And Softness To Mere Brilliancy And Coldness. Some People Remind Me Of Sharp Dazzling Diamonds. Valuable But Lifeless And Loveless. Others, Of The Simplest Field Flowers, With Hearts Full Of Dew And With All The Tints Of Celestial Beauty Reflected In Their Modest Petals.

I Spell 'god' With A Small 'g' Because I Do Not Believe In Him, But I Love To Swear By Him.

I Am Aware Of Being In A Beautiful Prison, From Which I Can Only Escape By Writing.

When I Cannot Bear Outer Pressures Anymore, I Begin To Put Order In My Belongings...as If Unable To Organize And Control My Life, I Seek To Exert This On The World Of Objects.

I’m Restless. Things Are Calling Me Away. My Hair Is Being Pulled By The Stars Again.

The Ivory Tower Of The Artist May Be The Only Stronghold Left For Human Values, Cultural Treasures, Man’s Cult Of Beauty.

The Personal Life Deeply Lived Always Expands Into Truths Beyond Itself.

One Handles Truths Like Dynamite. Literature Is One Vast Hypocrisy, A Giant Deception, Treachery. All Writers Have Concealed More Than They Revealed.

All Those Who Try To Unveil The Mysteries Always Have Tragic Lives. At The End They Are Always Punished.

The Impetus To Grow And Live Intensely Is So Powerful In Me I Cannot Resist It. I Will Work, I Will Love My Husband, But I Will Fulfill Myself.

I Am In Great Terror Of Your Understanding By Which You Penetrate Into My World; And Then I Stand Revealed And I Have Shared My Kingdom With You.

Since Desire Always Goes Towards That Which Is Our Direct Opposite, It Forces Us To Love That Which Will Make Us Suffer.

I Am Like A Snake Who Has Already Bitten. I Retreat From A Direct Battle While Knowing The Slow Effect Of The Poison.

I Want To Hear Raucous Music, To See Faces, To Brush Against Bodies, To Drink Fiery Benedictine. Beautiful Women And Handsome Men Arouse Fierce Desires In Me. I Want To Dance. I Want Drugs. I Want To Know Perverse People, To Be Intimate With Them. I Never Look At Naive Faces. I Want To Bite Into Life, And To Be Torn By It.

I See Enormous Loves Growing Immense And Finally Crushing Me.

I Seek The Real Stuff Of Life. Profound Drama.

Life Is What We Make It, Always Has Been, Always Will Be...including Our Perception. Of It

I Looked Upon A Clock To Find The Truth. The Hours Were Passing Like Ivory Chess Figures, Striking Piano Notes, And The Minutes Raced On Wires Mounted Like Tin Soldiers. Hours Like Tall Ebony Women With Gongs Between Their Legs, Tolling Continuously So That I Could Not Count Them. I Heard The Rolling Of My Heart-beats; I Heard The Footsteps Of My Dreams, And The Beat Of Time Was Lost Among Them Like The Face Of Truth.

We Don't See Things As They Are, We See Them As We Are.

Destruction Is Ultimately Self-destruction.

Self Destruction

The Core Of Creation Is To Summon An Image And The Power To Work With The Image.

To Write At The Same Temperature At Which I Live I Should Write Nothing But Poetry.

I Am A Failure As A Writer. The Publishers Won't Publish Me, The Bookshops Won't Carry My Books, The Critics Won't Write About Me. I Am Excluded From All Anthologies, And Completely Ignored.

We Three Belong To The Middle Ages. We Have This Need Of Heroism, And There Is No Place For Such Feelings In Modern Life. That Is Our Tragedy. Once I Wanted To Be A Saint. It Seemed The Only Absolute Act Left To Do, For What Is Most Powerful In Me Is The Craving For Purity, Greatness.

There Were Silences In My Head. I Could Abandon Myself Completely To The Pleasure Of Multiple Relationships, To The Beauty Of The Day, To The Joys Of The Day. It Was As If A Cancer In Me Had Ceased Gnawing Me. The Cancer Of Introspection.

What Everyone Forgets Is That Passion Is Not Merely A Heightened Sensual Fusion But A Way Of Life Which Produces, As In The Mystics, An Ecstatic Awareness Of The Whole Of Life.

I Like Extravagance. Letters Which Give The Postman A Stiff Back To Carry, Books Which Overflow From Their Covers, Sexuality Which Bursts The Thermometers.

Guilt Is The One Burden Human Beings Can't Bear Alone.

Jazz Is The Music Of The Body.

She Was Fully, Painfully Aware That Very Rarely Did Midnight Strike In Two Hearts At Once, Very Rarely Did Midnight Arouse Two Different Equal Desires, And That Any Dislocation In This, Any Indifference, Was An Indication Of Disunity, Of The Difficulties, The Impossibilities Of Fusion Between Two Human Beings.

The Love Of Only One Man Or One Woman Is An Enclosure.

Writing More And More To The Sound Of Music, Writing More And More Like Music. Sitting In My Studio Tonight, Playing Record After Record, Writing, Music A Stimulant Of The Highest Order, Far More Potent Than Wine.

Nature Forms Us For Ourselves, Not For Others; To Be, Not To Seem.

Beware Of Allowing A Tactless Word, A Rebuttal, A Rejection To Obliterate The Whole Sky

Houses Turn To Corpses Overnight When We Cease To Live And Love In Them.

Anything I Can Not Transform Into Something Marvelous, I Let Go.

Coming Near Him Like A Ballet Dancer She Took A Leap Towards Him, And He, Frightened By Her Vehemence, And Fearing That She Would Crash Against Him, Instinctively Became Absolutely Rigid, And She Felt Herself Embracing A Statue.

Through Love, Through Friendship, A Heart Lives More Than One Life.

Often, Though, The Passivity Of The Woman's Role Weighs On Me, Suffocates Me. Rather Than Wait For His Pleasure, I Would Like To Take It, To Run Wild. Is It That Which Pushes Me Into Lesbianism? It Terrifies Me. Do Women Act Thus? Does June Go To Henry When She Wants Him? Does She Mount Him? Does She Wait For Him? He Guides My Inexperienced Hands. It Is Like A Forest Fire, To Be With Him. New Places Of My Body Are Aroused And Burnt. He Is Incendiary. I Leave Him In An Unquenchable Fever.

The Enemy Of A Love Is Never Outside, It's Not A Man Or Woman, It's What We Lack In Ourselves.

Although I Love A Rich Life, I Hate An Overcrowded Life. I Believe In Rumination And Lose Half The Beauty Of All Things When I Am Deprived Of The Time To Ruminate.

Anxiety Is Loves Greatest Killer.

The Cynic Is A Coward. He Foresees All Barrenness So That Barrenness Can Never Surprise Him.

I Hate Men Who Are Afraid Of Women's Strength.

People Who Want A Sane, Static, Measurable World Take The First Aspect Of An Event Or Person And Stick To It, With An Almost Self-protective Obstinacy, Or By A Natural Limitation Of Their Imaginations. They Do Not Indulge In Either Deepening Or Magnifying.

All Of My Creation Is An Effort To Weave A Web Of Connection With The World: I Am Always Weaving It Because It Was Once Broken.

The Obstacle Became His Alibi For Weakness.

We Did Not Touch Each Other. We Were Both Leaning Over The Abyss.

In Creation Alone There Is The Possibility Of Perfection.

The Final Lesson A Writer Learns Is That Everything Can Nourish The Writer. The Dictionary, A New Word, A Voyage, An Encounter, A Talk On The Street, A Book, A Phrase Learned.

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