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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.

-Anais Nin

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Many Couples, Many People,

Anais Nin

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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.

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All Unlived Emotions Turn To Inanity.

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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.

The Body Is An Instrument Which Only Gives Off Music When It Is Used As A Body.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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The Only Abnormality Is The Incapacity To Love.

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Pain Is Something To Master, Not To Wallow In.

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Creation Which Cannot Express Itself Becomes Madness.

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

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Don't Let One Cloud Obliterate The Whole Sky.

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

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

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

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

Poverty Is The Great Reality. That Is Why The Artist Seeks It.

We Are Never Trapped Unless We Choose To Be.

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.

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How Well I Know With What Burning Intensity You Live. You Have Experienced Many Lives Already, Including Several You Have Shared With Me- Full Rich Lives From Birth To Death, And You Just Have To Have These Rest Periods In Between.

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

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

Worlds Self Made Are So Full Of Monsters And Demons.

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

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I Reserve The Right To Love Many Different People At Once, And To Change My Prince Often.

Different Peoples

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.

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

Each Friend Represents A World In Us.

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

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

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

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

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

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We Have Been Poisoned By Fairy Tales.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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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.

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!

Perfection Is Static, And I Am In Full Progress.

... Only Love Begets Love.

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.

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 See Enormous Loves Growing Immense And Finally Crushing Me.

We Celebrate Peace. Yet We Pay No Attention To The Ways Of Curing Aggression In Human Beings. And When One Sees In Psychoanalysis Hostility Disappearing As People Conquer Their Fears, One Wonders If The Cure Is Not There.

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Your Eyes Make Me Shy

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

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.

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 Write Emotional Algebra.

I Love Her For What She Has Dared To Be, For Her Hardness, Her Cruelty, Her Egoism, Her Perverseness, Her Demoniac Destructiveness. She Would Crush Me To Ashes Without Hesitation. She Is A Personality Created To The Limit. I Worship Her Courage To Hurt, And I Am Willing To Be Sacrificed To It. She Will Add The Sum Of Me To Her. She Will Be June Plus All That I Contain.

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

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

Write. Write Until It Stops Hurting.

When One Is Pretending The Entire Body Revolts.

I Prefer Empty Cages, Sabina, Until I Find A Unique Bird I Once Saw In My Dreams.

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

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

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.

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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.

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.

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.

Solitude May Rust Your Words.

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

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

I Seek The Real Stuff Of Life. Profound Drama.

Descendants Of Pigeons Once Fed By Keats, Byron, George Sand, Chopin And Many Other Famous Lovers Are Still Being Fed, And The Sudden Sound When They All Rise Together, Frightened Away, Is Like The Sound Of Giant Sails Flapping.

Compassion For Our Parents Is The True Sign Of Maturity.

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.

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.

The Softness Of The Summer Day Like An Ermine Paw.

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.

Dreams Are Necessary To Life.

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.

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.

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

We Write To Taste Life Twice, In The Moment, And In Retrospection.

At A Lecture I Am Asked To Pronounce My Name Three Times. I Try To Be Slow And Emphatic, "anaïs - Anaïs - Anaïs. You Just Say "anna" And Then Add "ees," With The Accent On The "ees."

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Throw Your Dreams Into Space Like A Kite, And You Do Not Know What It Will Bring Back, A New Life, A New Friend, A New Love, A New Country.

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Keeping A Diary All My Life Helped Me To Discover Some Basic Elements Essential To The Vitality Of Writing.

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

To Lie, Of Course, Is To Engender Insanity.

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.

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

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

Eroticism Is One Of The Basic Means Of Self-knowledge, As Indispensable As Poetry.

When I Don't Write, I Feel My World Shrink. I Lose My Fire, My Color.

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

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.

My Trunk, Valises And My Mind Are Overpacked.

Experience Teaches Acceptance Of The Imperfect As Life.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

The Basis Of Insincerity Is The Idealized Image We Hold Of Ourselves And Wish To Impose On Others.

I Find That Life, Day By Day, Is Composed Of At Least One Joy, One Problem And One Sorrow. Then There Are The Smaller Ingredients: You Always Learn Something, Whether Useful Or Harmful - That Is Difficult To Analyze Until Later; You Always Give Something; You Alwayou Always Grow A Little In One Direction Or Another.

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

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Esa-Pekka Salonen

Katharine Fullerton Gerould

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