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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.

-Anais Nin

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I Am An Excitable

Anais Nin

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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.

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

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

I Cheat Him, I Deceive Him, Yet The World Does Not Sink In Sulphur-colored Mists. Madness Conquers. I Can No Longer Put My Mosaics Together. I Just Cry And Laugh.

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

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

At Sixteen, Sabina Took Moon Baths, First Of All, Because Everyone Else Took Sun Baths, And Second, She Admitted, Because She Had Been Told It Was Dangerous.

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!

All That Is Sacred And Taboo In The World Are Meaningless.

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

Tropical Nights Are Hammocks For Lovers.

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.

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.

A Big Enough Artist, I Say, Can Eat Anything, Must Eat Everything And Then Alchemize It. Only The Feeble Writer Is Afraid Of Expansion.

He Has, Like Me, A Sense Of Smell. I Let Him Inhale Me, Then I Slip Away.

I Walk Ahead Of Myself In Perpetual Expectancy Of Miracles.

When I Don't Write, I Feel My World Shrinking. I Feel I Am In A Prison. I Feel I Lose My Fire And My Color. It Should Be A Necessity, As The Sea Needs To Heave, And I Call It Breathing.

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

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.

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.

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

Not Afraid Of Poverty And Drabness And Who Is Untouched By It, Untouched By The Drunkenness Of Her Friends; (she) Who Judges, Selects, Discards People With Severity, Who Knows, When She Is Telling Her Endless Anecdotes, That They Are Ways Of Escape, Keeping Herself All The More Secret Behind That Profuse Talk.

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

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.

You Can Either Give Negativity Power Over Your Life Or You Can Choose Happiness Instead.

The Only Transformer And Alchemist That Turns Everything Into Gold Is Love. The Only Magic Against Death, Aging, Ordinary Life, Is 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.

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

Solitude May Rust Your Words.

Introspection Is A Devouring Monster.

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.

Will You Come Down And Kiss Me Good Night?

To Think Of Him In The Middle Of The Day Lifts Me Out Of Ordinary Living.

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.

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.

The Value Of The Personal Relationship To All Things Is That It Creates Intimacy And Intimacy Creates Understanding And Understanding Creates Love.

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.

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.

The Earth Is Heavy And Opaque Without Dreams.

Again I Take A Taxi To Clichy Address, But Feel That I Do Not Want To Go On Loving Henry More Actively Than He Loves Me (having Realized That Nobody Will Ever Love Me In That Overabundant, Overexpressive, Overthoughtful, Overhuman Way I Love People), And So I Will Wait For Him. So I Ask Taxi Driver To Drop Me At The Galeries Lafayette, Where I Begin To Look For A New Hat And To Shop For Christmas. Pride? I Don't Know. A Kind Of Wise Retreat. I Need People Too Much. So I Bury My Gigantic Defect, My Overflow Of Love, Under Trivialities, Like A Child. I Amuse Myself With A New Hat.

I Postpone Death By Living, By Suffering, By Error, By Risking, By Giving, By Losing.

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.

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

My Ideas Usually Come Not At My Desk Writing But In The Midst Of Living.

Nowhere Is Inhumanity More Revealed Than In Hospitals.

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

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

Mature People Relate To Each Other Without The Need To Merge.

"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

No One Should Be Forced To Carry The Unfulfilled Self Of Another.

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.

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 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.

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.

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

The Man Who Was Once Starved May Revenge Himself Upon The World Not By Stealing Just Once, Or By Stealing Only What He Needs, But By Taking From The World An Endless Toll In Payment Of Something Irreplaceable, Which Is The Lost Faith.

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 Hate Men Who Are Afraid Of Women's Strength.

Luxury Is Not A Necessity To Me, But Beautiful And Good Things Are.

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.

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... Only Love Begets Love.

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.

The Truly Faithless One Is The One Who Makes Love To Only A Fraction Of You. And Denies The Rest.

Self-destructive Patterns Cause As Much Suffering As Outer Catastrophes.

I See Myself Wrapped In Lies, Which Do Not Seem To Penetrate My Soul, As If They Are Not Really A Part Of Me. They Are Like Costumes.

Sometimes We Reveal Ourselves When We Are Least Like Ourselves.

This Great Handsomeness I Took Into Myself Later When He Desired Me, But I Took It As One Breathes Air, Or Swallows A Snowflake, Or Yields To The Sun.

Perhaps The Only Magician We Have Is The Artist.

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

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.

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.

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

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 Had Been Struck By The Analogy Between Neurosis And Romanticism. Romanticism Was Truly A Parallel To Neurosis. It Demanded Of Reality An Illusory World, Love, An Absolute Which It Could Never Obtain, And Thus Destroyed Itself By The Dream.

And The Day Came When The Risk To Remain Tight In A Bud Was More Painful Than The Risk It Took To Blossom.

... And The Very Folds Of The Curtains Contained Secrets And Sighs.

When You Possess Light Within, You See It Externally.

Acapulco In The Sunset Seems Like A Balm; It Enters The Blood Like A Drug After One Inhalation Of The Scent Of Flowers, One Glimpse Of The Bay Iridescent Like Silk, The Sunset Like The Inside Of A Shell, So Much Like The Flesh Of Venus.

There Is No Bleaker Moment In Life Of The City Than That One Which Crosses The Boundary Lines Between Those Who Have Not Slept All Night And Those Who Are Going To Work. It Was For Sabina As If Two Races Of Men And Women Lived On Earth, The Night People And The Day People, Never Meeting Face To Face Except At This Moment.

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

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.

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

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.

In My Childhood Diary I Wrote: “i Have Decided That It Is Better Not To Love Anyone, Because When You Love People, Then You Have To Be Separated From Them, And That Hurts Too Much.

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

What We Call Our Destiny Is Truly Our Character And That Character Can Be Altered. The Knowledge That We Are Responsible For Our Actions And Attitudes Does Not Need To Be Discouraging, Because It Also Means That We Are Free To Change This Destiny. One Is Not In Bondage To The Past, Which Has Shaped Our Feelings, To Race, Inheritance, Background. All This Can Be Altered If We Have The Courage To Examine How It Formed Us. We Can Alter The Chemistry Provided We Have The Courage To Dissect The Elements.

Many Couples, Many People, Are Not Living With Real Human Beings, But With Their Ghosts. Who Has Not Followed For Years The Spell Of A Particular Tone Of Voice, From Voice To Voice, As The Fetishist Follows A Beautiful Foot, Scarcely Seeing The Woman Herself? A Voice, A Mouth, An Eye, All Stemming From The Original Fountain Of Our First Desire, Directing It, Enslaving Us, Until We Choose To Unravel The Fatal Web And Free Ourselves.

When One Is Pretending The Entire Body Revolts.

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.

Hollywood Is A Mirage Factory.

Stations And Airports Are Rehearsals For Separations By Death.

You Live Like This, Sheltered, In A Delicate World, And You Believe You Are Living.

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

The Theme Of The Diary Is Always The Personal, But It Does Not Mean Only A Personal Story: It Means A Personal Relationship To All Things And People. The Personal, If It Is Deep Enough, Becomes Universal, Mythical, Symbolic; I Never Generalize, Intellectualise. I See, I Hear, I Feel. These Are My Primitive Elements Of Discovery. Music, Dance, Poetry And Painting Are The Channels For Emotion. It Is Through Them That Experience Penetrates Our Bloodstream.

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.

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

There Is A Fissure In My Vision And Madness Will Always Rush Through.

Your Eyes Make Me Shy

In New York The Acoustics Are Good For Laughter, For Life Is All External, All Action, No Thought, No Meditation, No Dreaming, No Reflection, Only The Exuberance Of Action.

How Wrong It Is For A Woman To Expect The Man To Build The World She Wants, Rather Than To Create It Herself.

You Don't Find Love, It Finds You. It's Got A Little Bit To Do With Destiny, Fate, And What's Written In The Stars.

New York Has An Electronic Heart.

Jazz Is The Music Of The Body.

I Love Your Silences, They Are Like Mine.

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.

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.

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

Destruction Is Ultimately Self-destruction.

Self Destruction

You Are The Poet, You Walk Inside My Dreams.

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.

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.

Anxiety Is Love's Greatest Killer, Because It Is Like The Stranglehold Of The Drowning.

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

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

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.

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

We Love Best Those Who Are, Or Act For Us, A Self We Do Not Wish To Be Or Act Out.

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

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.

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

He Was Now In That State Of Fire That She Loved. She Wanted To Be Burnt.

Inspirational Love

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.

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.

The Diary Taught Me That It Is In The Moments Of Emotional Crisis That Human Beings Reveal Themselves Most Accurately. I Learned To Choose The Heightened Moments Because They Are The Moments Of Revelation.

I Will Not Adjust Myself To The World. I Am Adjusted To Myself.

Only When The Poet And The Scientist Work In Unison Will We Have Living Experiences And Knowledge Of The Marvels Of The Universe As They Are Being Discovered.

People Living Deeply Have No Fear Of Death.

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.

What Can I Do With My Happiness? How Can I Keep It, Conceal It, Bury It Where I May Never Lose It? I Want To Kneel As It Falls Over Me Like Rain, Gather It Up With Lace And Silk, And Press It Over Myself Again.

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

I Had A Feeling That Pandora's Box Contained The Mysteries Of Woman's Sensuality, So Different From A Man's And For Which Man's Language Was So Inadequate. The Language Of Sex Had Yet To Be Invented. The Language Of The Senses Was Yet To Be Explored.

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

Also, I Do Not Like The Companionship Of Women. They Are Petty And Personal. They Hang On To Their Mysteries And Secrets, They Act And Pretend. I Like The Character Of Men Better.

I Have A Prejudice Against People With Money. I Have Known So Many, And None Have Escaped The Corruption Of Power. In This I Am A Purist. I Love People Motivated By Love And Not By Power. If You Have Money And Power, And Are Motivated By Love, You Give It All Away.

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.

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

We See Things The Way We Are, Not The Way They Are.

I Either Eat Too Much Or Starve Myself. Sleep For 14 Hours Or Have Insomniac Nights. Fall In Love Very Hard Or Hate Passionately. I Don't Know What Grey Is. I Never Did.

Falling In Love

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

To Love And To Labor Is The Sum Of Living.

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.

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

Art Is The Method Of Levitation, In Order To Separate One's Self From Enslavement By The Earth.

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.

I Know Why Families Were Created With All Their Imperfections. They Humanize You. They Are Made To Make You Forget Yourself Occasionally, So That The Beautiful Balance Of Life Is Not Destroyed.

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.

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

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

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.

While Analyzing So Many People I Realized The Constant Need Of A Mother, Or A Father, Or A God (the Same Thing) Is Really Immaturity. It Is A Childish Need, A Human Need, But So Universal That I Can See How It Gave Birth To All Religions.

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.

My Diary Seems To Keep Me Whole.

Convalescence. Such An Utter Weakness That You Lie Like An Animal Hibernating, Playing Possum. You Float. You Are Adrift. Every Current Is Stronger Than You.

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.

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

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?

The True Liberation Of Eroticism Lies In Accepting The Fact That There Are A Million Facets To It, A Million Forms Of Eroticism, A Million Objects Of It, Situations, Atmospheres, And Variations. We Have, First Of All, To Dispense With Guilt Concerning Its Expansion, Then Remain Open To It's Surprises, Varied Expressions, And Mingle It With Dreams, Fantasies, And Emotion For It To Attain Its Highest Potency.

Great Repressions Create Dualities.

Our Psychological Reality, Which Lies Below The Surface, Frightens Us Because It Endlessly Surprises Us And Drives Us In A Direction Which Society's Rules And Organizations Define As Wrong Or Dangerous.

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

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.

Expressing Feelings Is Linked Directly With Creation... In This Ability To Tap The Sources Of Feeling And Imagination Lies The Secret Of Abundance.

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

I Wanted To Remember In Order To Be Able To Return.

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

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

To Write Is To Descend, To Excavate, To Go Underground.

Physical Experiences, Lacking The Joys Of Love, Depend On Twists And Perversions Of Pleasure. Abnormal Pleasures Kill The Taste For Normal Ones.

Dreams Are Essential To Life.

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

My First Vision Of Earth Was Water Veiled. I Am Of The Race Of Men And Women Who See All Things Through This Curtain Of Sea And My Eyes Are The Color Of Water.

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

Anxiety Is Loves Greatest Killer.

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

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.

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.

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.

Why Do I Doubt Her? Perhaps She Is Just Very Sensitive, And Hypersensitive People Are False When Others Doubt Them; They Waver. And One Thinks Them Insincere. Yet I Want To Believe Her. At The Same Time It Does Not Seem So Very Important That She Should Love Me. It Is Not Her Role. I Am So Filled With My Love Of Her. And At The Same Time I Feel That I Am Dying. Our Love Would Be Death. The Embrace Of Imaginings.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Each Contact With A Human Being Is So Rare, So Precious, One Should Preserve It.

In The World Of The Dreamer There Was Solitude: All The Exaltations And Joys Came In The Moment Of Preparation For Living. They Took Place In Solitude. But With Action Came Anxiety, And The Sense Of Insuperable Effort Made To Match The Dream, And With It Came Weariness, Discouragement, And The Flight Into Solitude Again. And Then In Solitude, In The Opium Den Of Remembrance, The Possibility Of Pleasure Again.

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

Jazz Is The Expression Of America's Romantic Self, Its Sensual Potency, Its Lyrical Force.

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.

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.

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.

Write. Write Until It Stops Hurting.

I Do Not Want To Be The Leader. I Refuse To Be The Leader. I Want To Live Darkly.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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