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For Too Many Centuries Women Have Been Being Muses To Artists. I Wanted To Be The Muse, I Wanted To Be The Wife Of The Artist, But I Was Really Trying To Avoid The Final Issue — That I Had To Do The Job Myself.

-Anais Nin

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For Too Many Centuries

Anais Nin

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For Too Many Centuries Women Have Been Being Muses To Artists. I Wanted To Be The Muse, I Wanted To Be The Wife Of The Artist, But I Was Really Trying To Avoid The Final Issue — That I Had To Do The Job Myself.

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With Her Eyes Alone She Could Give This Response, This Absolutely Erotic Response, As If Febrile Waves Were Trembling There, Pools Of Madness... Something Devouring That Could Lick A Man All Over Like A Flame, Annihilate Him, With A Pleasure Never Known Before.

I Am An Excitable Person Who Only Understands Life Lyrically, Musically, In Whom Feelings Are Much Stronger As Reason. I Am So Thirsty For The Marvelous That Only The Marvelous Has Power Over Me. Anything I Can Not Transform Into Something Marvelous, I Let Go. 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.

I Hate Rarely, Though When I Hate, I Hate Murderously.

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 Take Pleasure In My Transformations. I Look Quiet And Consistent, But Few Know How Many Women There Are In Me.

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

That Is My Essential Reason For Writing, Not For Fame, Not To Be Celebrated After Death, But To Heighten And Create Life All Around Me. I Also Write Because When I Am Writing I Reach The High Moment Of Fusion Sought By The Mystics, The Poets, The Lovers, A Sense Of Communion With The Universe.

I Stopped Loving My Father A Long Time Ago. What Remained Was The Slavery To A Pattern.

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

I Have No Fear Of God, And Yet Fear Keeps Me Awake At Night,fear Of The Devil. And If I Believe In The Devil, I Must Believe In God. And If Evil Is Abhorrent To Me, I Must Be A Saint. Henry, Save Me From Beatification, From The Horrors Of Static Perfection. Precipitate Me Into The Inferno.

Introspection Is A Devouring Monster. You Have To Feed It With Much Material, Much Experience, Many People, Many Places, Many Loves, Many Creations, And Then It Ceases Feeding On You.

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

The Risk It Takes To Remain Tight Inside The Bud Is More Painful Than The Risk It Takes To Blossom. We Don't See Things As They Are, We See Them As We Are.

In My Dreams I Sleep With Everybody.

Human Beings Can Reach Such Desperate Solitude That They May Cross A Boundary Beyond Which Words Cannot Serve, And At Such Moments There Is Nothing Left For Them But To Bark.

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.

Living Never Wore One Out So Much As The Effort Not To Live.

I Love Your Silences, They Are Like Mine.

I'm Awaiting A Lover. I Have To Be Rent And Pulled Apart And Live According To The Demons And The Imagination In Me. I'm Restless. Things Are Calling Me Away. My Hair Is Being Pulled By The Stars Again.

I'm Restless. Things Are Calling Me Away. My Hair Is Being Pulled By The Stars Again. AnaÏs Nin, Fire: From "a Journal Of Love" The Unexpurgated Diary Of Anaïs Nin, 1934-1938 For Me, The Adventures Of The Mind, Each Inflection Of Thought, Each Movement, Nuance, Growth, Discovery, Is A Source Of Exhilaration.

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.

Memory Is A Great Betrayer.

Talk—half-talk, Phrases That Had No Need To Be Finished, Abstractions, Chinese Bells Played On With Cotton-tipped Sticks, Mock Orange Blossoms Painted On Porcelain. The Muffled, Close, Half-talk Of Soft-fleshed Women. The Men She Had Embraced, And The Women, All Washing Against The Resonance Of My Memory. Sound Within Sound, Scene Within Scene, Woman Within Woman—like Acid Revealing An Invisible Script. One Woman Within Another Eternally, In A Far-reaching Procession, Shattering My Mind Into Fragments, Into Quarter Tones Which No Orchestral Baton Can Ever Make Whole Again.

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.

Our Age Has Need Of Violence," He Writes. And He Is Violence.

The Earth Is Heavy And Opaque Without Dreams.

The Real Wonders Of Life Lie In The Depths. Exploring The Depths For Truths Is The Real Wonder Which The Child And The Artist Know: Magic And Power Lie In Truth.

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

For You And For Me The Highest Moment, The Keenest Joy, Is Not When Our Minds Dominate But When We Lose Our Minds, And You And I Both Lose It In The Same Way, Through Love.

It Is A Sign Of Great Inner Insecurity To Be Hostile To The Unfamiliar.

The Richest Source Of Creation Is Feeling, Followed By A Vision Of Its Meaning.

Will You Come Down And Kiss Me Good Night?

Compassion For Our Parents Is The True Sign Of Maturity.

Nothing Too Long Imagined Can Be Perfect In A Wordly Way.

The Morning I Got Up To Begin This Book I Coughed. Something Was Coming Out Of My Throat: It Was Strangling Me. I Broke The Thread Which Held It And Yanked It Out. I Went Back To Bed And Said: I Have Just Spat Out My Heart.

The Dream Has To Be Translated Into Reality.

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.

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

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.

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

The Important Task Of Literature Is To Free Man, Not To Censor Him, And That Is Why Puritanism Was The Most Destructive And Evil Force Which Ever Oppressed People And Their Literature: It Created Hypocrisy, Perversion, Fears, Sterility.

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

If A Person Continues To See Giants, It Means He Is Still Looking At The World Through The Eyes Of A Child.

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

I Have So Strong A Sense Of Creation, Of Tomorrow, That I Cannot Get Drunk, Knowing I Will Be Less Alive, Less Well, Less Creative The Next Day.

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 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.

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.

Atrophy Of Feeling Creates Criminals.

Shame Is The Lie Someone Told You About Yourself.

If I Fall Asleep, It Is Because I Am Overloaded. I Sleep Because One Hour With Henry Contains Five Years Of My Life, And One Phrase, One Caress Answers The Expectations Of A Hundred Nights. When I Hear Him Laugh, I Say, "i Have Heard Rabelais.". And I Swallow His Laughter Like Bread And Wine.

... Only Love Begets Love.

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

I Want To Fall In Love In Such A Way That The Mere Sight Of A Man, Even A Block Away From Me, Will Shake And Pierce Me, Will Weaken Me, And Make Me Tremble And Soften And Melt.

Falling In Love

Pain Is Something To Master, Not To Wallow In.

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

You Cannot Save People. You Can Only Love Them.

You Are The Poet, You Walk Inside My Dreams.

I Disregard The Proportions, The Measures, The Tempo Of The Ordinary World. I Refuse To Live In The Ordinary World As Ordinary Women. To Enter Ordinary Relationships. I Want Ecstasy. I Am A Neurotic — In The Sense That I Live In My World. I Will Not Adjust Myself To The World. I Am Adjusted To Myself.

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

One Discovers That Destiny Can Be Diverted, That One Does Not Have To Remain In Bondage To The First Wax Imprint Made On Childhood Sensibilities. Once The Deforming Mirror Has Been Smashed, There Is A Possibility Of Wholeness. There Is A Possibility Of Joy.

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

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.

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.

The Imagination Is Far Better At Inventing Tortures Than Life Because The Imagination Is A Demon Within Us And It Knows Where To Strike, Where It Hurts. It Knows The Vulnerable Spot, And Life Does Not, Our Friends And Lovers Do Not, Because Seldom Do They Have The Imagination Equal To The Task.

Asia Discovered Two Remedies For The Cruelty Of Man, Art And Religion. America Discarded Both And Is Drowning In Hate And Aggressivity.

Only The United Beat Of Sex And Heart Together Can Create Ecstasy.

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

Inspirational Life

She Lacks Confidence, She Craves Admiration Insatiably. She Lives On The Reflections Of Herself In The Eyes Of Others. She Does Not Dare To Be Herself.

Instead Of Answering Her As Soon As He Saw Her Hair Grow Electric, Her Face More Vivid, Her Eyes Like Lightning, Her Body Restless And Jerky Like A Racehorse’s, He Retired Behind This Wall Of Objective Understanding, This Gentle Testing And Acceptance Of Her, Just As One Watches An Animal In The Zoo And Smiles At His Antics, But Is Not Drawn Into This Mood. It Was This Which Left Lilith In A State Of Isolation - Indeed, Like A Wild Animal In An Absolute Desert.

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.

If I Love You It Means We Share The Same Fantasies, The Same Madnesses

Worlds Self Made Are So Full Of Monsters And Demons.

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.

Innocence Was Gone From All Our Acts. Our Habitual State Of Rebellion Became A Serious Political Crime.

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.

Introspection Is A Devouring Monster.

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.

The Two Men Who Have Done The Greatest Harm To The World Are Christ And Columbus. Christ Taught Us Guilt And Sacrifice, To Live Only In The Other World, And Columbus Discovered America And Materialism.

Sexual Intercourse... A Joyous, Joyous, Joyous, Joyous Impaling Of Woman On Man's Sensual Mast.

My Life Is Slowed Up By Thought And The Need To Understand What I Am Living.

I Walked Into My Own Book, Seeking Peace. It Was Night, And I Made A Careless Movement Inside The Dream; I Turned Too Brusquely The Corner And I Bruised Myself Against My Madness.

Where The Myth Fails, Human Love Begins. Then We Love A Human Being, Not Our Dream, But A Human Being With Flaws.

Life Is So Fluid That One Can Only Hope To Capture The Living Moment, To Capture It Alive And Fresh ... Without Destroying That Moment.

The Shell Is America's Most Active Contribution To The Formation Of Character. A Tough Hide. Grow It Early.

Your Eyes Make Me Shy

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.

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

Leaves In The Wind

This Image Of Herself As A Not Ordinary Women, An Image Which Was Trembling Now In His Eyes, Might Suddenly Disappear. Nothing More Difficult To Live Up To Than Men's Dreams.

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

At First I Protested And Rebelled Against Poetry. I Was About To Deny My Poetic Worlds. I Was Doing Violence To My Illusions With Analysis, Science, And Learning Henry’s Language, Entering Henry’s World. I Wanted To Destroy By Violence And Animalism My Tenuous Fantasies And Illusions And My Hypersensitivity. A Kind Of Suicide. The Ignominy Awakened Me. Then June Came And Answered The Cravings Of My Imagination And Saved Me. Or Perhaps She Killed Me, For Now I Am Started On A Course Of Madness.

Life Is A Full Circle, Widening Until It Joins The Circle Motions Of The Infinite.

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.

For Too Many Centuries Women Have Been Being Muses To Artists. I Wanted To Be The Muse, I Wanted To Be The Wife Of The Artist, But I Was Really Trying To Avoid The Final Issue — That I Had To Do The Job Myself.

What I Cannot Love, I Overlook. Is That Real Friendship?

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

The Dangerous Time When Mechanical Voices, Radios, Telephones, Take The Place Of Human Intimacies, And The Concept Of Being In Touch With Millions Brings A Greater And Greater Poverty In Intimacy And Human Vision.

There Were Always In Me, Two Women At Least, One Woman Desperate And Bewildered, Who Felt She Was Drowning And Another Who Would Leap Into A Scene, As Upon A Stage, Conceal Her True Emotions Because They Were Weaknesses, Helplessness, Despair, And Present To The World Only A Smile, An Eagerness, Curiosity, Enthusiasm, Interest.

I Have This Weird Obsession About Buying Books And Looking At Them With A Smile, Even If I Won't Read Them Soon. At Least They Are Mine Now.

It Is Easy To Love And There Are So Many Ways To Do It.

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 See Enormous Loves Growing Immense And Finally Crushing Me.

When I Hear Of People Who Weary Of Each Other, I Believe It Is Because They Have Sought Virtues In Themselves Alone, Attractions Of Physical Beauty. Have They Based Their Love On Each Other's Thoughts? Who Can Weary Of Thoughts Which Change Every Day?

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

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

Something Is Always Born Of Excess: Great Art Was Born Of Great Terror, Great Loneliness, Great Inhibitions, Instabilities, And It Always Balances Them.

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 Have Been Poisoned By Fairy Tales.

They Courted The Face On The Screen, The Face Of Translucence, The Face Of Wax On Which Men Found It Possible To Imprint The Image Of Their Fantasy.

I Needed To Live, But I Also Needed To Record What I Lived.

The Dream Was Always Running Ahead Of Me. To Catch Up, To Live For A Moment In Unison With It, That Was The Miracle.

One May Gain One Truth At The Expense Of Another.

I Know No Joy As Great As A Moment Of Rushing Into A New Love, No Ecstasy Like That Of A New Love.

I Can’t Let You Go Now. I Want To Go Places With You; Obscure Little Places, Just To Be Able To Say: Here I Came With Her.

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 Don't Wish Power, Only Art -art And Passion.

The Unconscious Can Become Destructive If It Is Disregarded And Thwarted.

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.

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

The Final Lesson A Writer Learns Is That Everything Can Nourish The Writer.

Each Friend Represents A World In Us, A World Not Born Until They Arrive, And It Is Only By This Meeting That A New World Is Born.

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

You Carry Away With You A Reflection Of Me, A Part Of Me. I Dreamed You; I Wished For Your Existence. You Will Always Be A Part Of My Life. If I Love You, It Must Be Because We Shared, At Some Moment, The Same Imaginings, The Same Madness, The Same Stage.

When One Is Pretending The Entire Body Revolts.

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

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

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.

Women Always Think That When They Have My Shoes, My Dress, My Hairdresser, My Makeup, It Will All Work The Same Way. They Do Not Conceive Of The Witchcraft That Is Needed. They Do Not Know That I Am Not Beautiful But That I Only Appear To Be At Certain Moments.

When I Stand At The Top Of The Champs-elysées, With Its Chestnut Trees In Flower, Its Undulations Of Shining Cars, Its White Spaciousness, I Feel As If I Were Biting Into A Utopian Fruit, Something Velvety And Lustrous And Rich And Vivid.

Analysis Does Not Take Into Account The Creative Products Of Neurotic Desires.

We Are Cruel When Someone Refuses To Play The Role In Which We Have Cast Him. We Judge A Person Only According To His Relationship Towards Us.

Perhaps The Only Magician We Have Is The Artist.

People Living Deeply Have No Fear Of Death.

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.

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.

I Will Always Be The Virgin-prostitute, The Perverse Angel, The Two-faced Sinister And Saintly Woman.

Warmth, Perfume, Rugs, Soft Lights, Books. They Do Not Appease Me. I Am Aware Of Time Passing, Of All The World Contains That I Have Not Seen, Of All The Interesting People I Have Not Met.

When You Possess Light Within, You See It Externally.

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

It Is Possible I Never Learned The Names Of Birds In Order To Discover The Bird Of Peace, The Bird Of Paradise, The Bird Of The Soul, The Bird Of Desire. It Is Possible I Avoided Learning The Names Of Composers And Their Music The Better To Close My Eyes And Listen To The Mystery Of All Music As An Ocean. It May Be I Have Not Learned Dates In History In Order To Reach The Essence Of Timelessness. It May Be I Never Learned Geography The Better To Map My Own Routes And Discover My Own Lands. The Unknown Was My Compass. The Unknown Was My Encyclopedia. The Unnamed Was My Science And Progress.

Gold Never Comes To The Dreamers - Except In Dreams.

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

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

Create A World, Your World. Alone. Stand Alone. And Then Love Will Come To You, Then It Comes To You.

I Love Your Silences, They Are Like Mine. You Are The Only Being Before Whom I Am Not Distressed By My Own Silences. You Have A Vehement Silence, One Feels It Is Charged With Essences, It Is A Strangely Alive Silence, Like A Trap Open Over A Well, From Which One Can Hear The Secret Murmur Of The Earth Itself.

Ordinary Life Does Not Interest Me. I Seek Only The High Moments. I Am In Accord With The Surrealists, Searching For The Marvelous. I Want To Be A Writer Who Reminds Others That These Moments Exist; I Want To Prove That There Is Infinite Space, Infinite Meaning, Infinite Dimension. But I Am Not Always In What I Call A State Of Grace. I Have Days Of Illuminations And Fevers. I Have Days When The Music In My Head Stops. Then I Mend Socks, Prune Trees, Can Fruits, Polish Furniture. But While I Am Doing This I Feel I Am Not Living.

Sometimes We Reveal Ourselves When We Are Least Like Ourselves.

The Suppression Of Inner Patterns In Favor Of Patterns Created By Society Is Dangerous To Us.

Why One Writes Is A Question I Can Answer Easily, Having So Often Asked It Of Myself. I Believe One Writes Because One Has To Create A World In Which One Can Live. I Could Not Live In Any Of The Worlds Offered To Me - The World Of My Parents, The World Of War, The World Of Politics. I Had To Create A World Of My Own, Like A Climate, A Country, An Atmosphere In Which I Could Breathe, Reign, And Recreate Myself When Destroyed By Living. That, I Believe, Is The Reason For Every Work Of Art.

For The Neurotic, The Merging Of The Subconscious And The Conscious May Be Risky, Just As It Is For The Users Of Drugs. But For The Writer Who Is Aware Of The Way In Which This Connection Exists In Reality And Nourishes Creativity, The Sooner He Can Achieve A Synthesis Among Intellect, Emotion, And Instinct, The Sooner His Work Will Be Integrated.

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

The Period Without The Diary Remains An Ordeal. Every Evening I Want My Diary As One Wants Opium.

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.

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

The Violence And Obscenity Are Left Unadulterated, As Manifestation Of The Mystery And Pain Which Ever Accompanies The Act Of Creation.

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

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

Our Love Lives Because I Live.

New York Seems Conducted By Jazz, Animated By It. It Is Essentially A City Of Rhythm.

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.

I Believe That Men Are Generally Still A Little Afraid Of The Dark Though The Witches Are All Hung, And Christianity And Candles Have Been Introduced.

I Write Emotional Algebra.

The Most Important Human Endeavor Is The Striving For Morality In Our Actions. Our Inner Balance And Even Our Very Existence Depend On It. Only Morality In Our Actions Can Give Beauty And Dignity To Life. Albert Einstein 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.

The Possession Of Knowledge Does Not Kill The Sense Of Wonder And Mystery. There Is Always More Mystery.

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

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

The Child In Me Could Not Die As It Should Have Died, Because According Too Legends It Must Find Its Father Again. The Old Legends Knew, Perhaps, That In Absence The Father Becomes Glorified, Deified, Eroticized, And This Outrage Against God The Father Has To Be Atoned For. The Human Father Has To Be Confronted And Recognized As Human, As Man Who Created A Child And Then, By His Absence, Left The Child Fatherless And Then Godless.

She Makes Use Of The Soft Of The Bread For A Napkin. She Falls Asleep At Times With Shoes On, On Unmade Beds. When A Little Money Comes In, June Buys Delicacies, Strawberries In The Winter, Caviar And Bath Salts.

To Change Skins, Evolve Into New Cycles, I Feel One Has To Learn To Discard

A Man Fell In Love With Jeanne, And She Tried To Love Him. But She Complained That He Uttered Such Ordinary Words, That He Could Never Say The Magic Phrase Which Would Open Her Being.

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.

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?

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.

Tranquillity Is Contagious, Peace Is Contagious. One Only Thinks Of The Contagiousness Of Illness, But There Is The Contagion Of Serenity And Joy.

"we See The World As 'we' Are, Not As 'it' Is; Because It Is The "i" Behind The 'eye' That Does The Seeing."

Self Improvement

One Must Be Thrust Out Of A Finished Cycle In Life, And That Leap Is The Most Difficult To Make - To Part With One's Faith, One's Love, When One Would Prefer To Renew The Faith And Recreate The Passion.

The Creative Personality Never Remains Fixed On The First World It Discovers. It Never Resigns Itself To Anything.

We Do Not Escape Into Philosophy, Psychology, And Art--we Go There To Restore Our Shattered Selves Into Whole Ones.

Whenever You Do Something That Is Not Aligned With The Yearning Or Your Soul—you Create Suffering.

I Adore The Struggle You Carry In Yourself. I Adore Your Terrifying Sincerity.

What A Mystery This Is, Desire. The Love Sickness, The Sensitivity, The Obsession, The Flutter Of The Heart, The Ebb And Flow Of The Blood. There Is No Drug And No Alcohol To Equal It.

If A Person Continues To See Only Giants, It Means He Is Still Seeing The World Through The Eyes Of A Child. I Have A Feeling That Man's Fear Of Woman Comes From Having First Seen Her As The Mother, Creator Of Men.

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

Some People Read To Confirm Their Own Hopelessness. Others Read To Be Rescued From It.

Every Individual Is Representative Of The Whole . . . And Should Be Intimately Understood, And This Would Give A Far Greater Understanding Of Mass Movements And Sociology.

The Human Father Has To Be Confronted And Recognized As Human, As Man Who Created A Child And Then, By His Absence, Left The Child Fatherless And Then Godless.

New York Has An Electronic Heart.

I Will Not Be Just A Tourist In A World Of Images.

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

Balance Is Not To Be Sought By Association With Others; It Must Exist Within One's Self.

I Only Regret That Everybody Wants To Deprive Me Of The Journal, Which Is The Only Steadfast Friend I Have, The Only One Which Makes My Life Bearable, Because My Happiness With Human Beings Is So Precarious, My Confiding Moods Rare, And The Least Sign Of Non-interest Is Enough To Silence Me. In The Journal I Am At Ease.

The Best Way To Remember A Beautiful City Or A Beautiful Painting Is To Eat Something While You Are Looking At It. The Flavor Really Helps The Image To Penetrate The Body. It Fixes It As Lacquer Does A Drawing.

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

Then At Certain Moments I Remember One Of His Words And I Suddenly Feel The Sensual Woman Flaring Up, As If Violently Caressed. I Say The Word To Myself, With Joy. It Is At Such A Moment That My True Body Lives.

I Have No Brakes On...analysis Is For Those Who Are Paralyzed By Life.

We Are All Engaged In The Task Of Peeling Off The False Selves, The Programmed Selves, The Selves Created By Our Families, Our Culture, Our Religions. It Is An Enormous Task Because The History Of Women Has Been As Incompletely Told As The History Of Blacks.

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

I Despise My Own Hypersensitiveness, Which Requires So Much Reassurance. It Is Certainly Abnormal To Crave So Much To Be Loved And Understood.

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Sarah Jessica Parker

William J. Brennan

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