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I Must Know, He Thinks. It Must Be Clear To Me. There Is A World Which Is Closed To Him, A World Of Shadings, Gradations, Nuances, And Subtleties. He Is A Genius And Yet He Is Too Explicit. June Slips Between His Fingers. You Cannot Posses Without Loving.

-Anais Nin

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I Must Know, He

Anais Nin

...

I Must Know, He Thinks. It Must Be Clear To Me. There Is A World Which Is Closed To Him, A World Of Shadings, Gradations, Nuances, And Subtleties. He Is A Genius And Yet He Is Too Explicit. June Slips Between His Fingers. You Cannot Posses Without Loving.

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I, With A Deeper Instinct, Choose A Man Who Compels My Strength, Who Makes Enormous Demands On Me, Who Does Not Doubt My Courage Or My Toughness, Who Does Not Believe Me Naive Or Innocent, Who Has The Courage To Treat Me Like A Woman.

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Falling In Love

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.

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Life Shrinks Or Expands In Proportion To One's Courage.

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

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Destruction Is Ultimately Self-destruction.

Self Destruction

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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.

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

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

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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.

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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.

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.

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

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

We Have Been Poisoned By Fairy Tales.

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

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

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

And Silence. She Liked The Silence Most Of All. The Silence In Which The Body, Senses, The Instincts, Are More Alert, More Powerful, More Sensitized, Live A More Richly Perfumed And Intoxication Life, Instead Of Transmuting Into Thoughts, Words, Into Exquisite Abstractions, Mathematics Of Emotion In Place Of Violent Impact, The Volcanic Eruptions Of Fever, Lust And Delight.

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.

Atrophy Of Feeling Creates Criminals.

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.

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

My Life Is Not Possible To Tell. I Change Every Day, Change My Patterns, My Concepts, My Interpretations. I Am A Series Of Moods And Sensations. I Play A Thousand Roles. I Weep When I Find Others Play Them For Me. My Real Self Is Unknown. My Work Is Merely An Essence Of This Vast And Deep Adventure.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Idealism Is The Death Of The Body And The Imagination. All But Freedom, Utter Freedom, Is Death

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.

Adolescence Is Like Cactus.

I Sat There For Three Hours And Did Not Feel The Time Or The Boredom Of Our Talk And Its Foolish Disconnection. As Long As I Could Hear His Voice, I Was Quite Lost, Quite Blind, Quite Outside My Own Self.

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.

It's All Right For A Woman To Be, Above All, Human. I Am A Woman First Of All.

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

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.

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

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.

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 Truly Known Only To Those Who Suffer, Lose, Endure Adversity And Stumble From Defeat To Defeat.

Write. Write Until It Stops Hurting.

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.

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.

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.

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

Your Eyes Make Me Shy

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.

Worlds Self Made Are So Full Of Monsters And Demons.

Stations And Airports Are Rehearsals For Separations By Death.

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

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

Too Late For Changes, Too Late Perhaps For Explanations And Ideological Webs, But The Love Goes On, The Love Goes On, Blind To Laws And Warnings And Even To Wisdom And To Fears. And Whatever That Love Is, Perhaps An Illusion Of A New Love, I Want It, I Cant Resist It, My Whole Being Melts In One Kiss, My Knowledge Melts, My Fears Melt, My Blood Dances, My Legs Open.

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.

When We Blindly Adopt A Religion, A Political System, A Literary Dogma, We Become Automatons. We Cease To Grow.

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

There Are Very Few Human Beings Who Receive The Truth, Complete And Staggering, By Instant Illumination. Most Of Them Acquire It Fragment By Fragment, On A Small Scale, By Successive Developments, Cellularly, Like A Laborious Mosaic.

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

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.

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.

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

I Have An Attitude Now That Is Immovable. I Shall Remain Outside Of The World, Beyond The Temporal, Beyond All The Organizations Of The World. I Only Believe In Poetry.

The Obstacle Became His Alibi For Weakness.

To Withhold From Living Is To Die ... The More You Give Of Yourself To Life The More Life Nourishes You.

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

A Man Who Lives Unrelated To Other Human Beings Dies. But A Man Who Lives Unrelated To Himself Also Dies.

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.

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