Background Image

...

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.

-Anais Nin

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

One Always, Sooner Or

Anais Nin

...

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.

Views: 6

Topic

More From Anais Nin

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

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

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

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

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The One Who Travels Like A Lover Searching For A New Passion Is Suddenly Blessed With New Eyes, New Ears, New Senses.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Most Artists Have Retired Too Absolutely; They Grow Rusty, Inflexible To The Flow Of Currents.

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.

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

Anxiety Is Loves Greatest Killer.

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

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

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

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.

To Lie, Of Course, Is To Engender Insanity.

Last Night I Wept. I Wept Because The Process By Which I Have Become Woman Was Painful. I Wept Because I Was No Longer A Child With A Child's Blind Faith. I Wept Because My Eyes Were Opened To Reality....i Wept Because I Could Not Believe Anymore And I Love To Believe. I Can Still Love Passionately Without Believing. That Means I Love Humanly. I Wept Because I Have Lost My Pain And I Am Not Yet Accustomed To Its Absence.

It Takes Courage To Push Yourself To Places You Have Never Been Before... To Test Your Limits... To Break Through Barriers. And The Day Came When The Risk It Took To Stay Tight Inside The Bud Was More Painful Than The Risk It Took To Blossom.

The Fiery Moments Of Passionate Experience Are The Moments Of Wholeness And Totality Of The Personality.

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

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

Inspirational Life

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.

Don't Let One Cloud Obliterate The Whole Sky.

Positive Thinking

Solitude May Rust Your Words.

A War Regarded As Inevitable Or Even Probable, And Therefore Much Prepared For, Has A Very Good Chance Of Eventually Being Fought.

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

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

In Music I Feel Most Deeply The Passing Of Things.

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.

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

I Walk Ahead Of Myself In Perpetual Expectancy Of Miracles.

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

When Your Beauty Struck Me, It Dissolved Me. Deep Down, I Am Not Different From You. I Dreamed You, I Wished For Your Existence. I See In You That Part Of Me Which Is You. I Surrender My Sincerity Because If I Love You It Means We Share The Same Fantasies, We Share The Same Madness.

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

Introspection Is A Devouring Monster.

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!

Perhaps A Child, Like A Cat, Is So Much Inside Of Himself That He Does Not See Himself In The Mirror.

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

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

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

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

Our Love Lives Because I Live.

Dreams Pass Into The Reality Of Action. From The Actions Stems The Dream Again; And This Interdependence Produces The Highest Form Of Living.

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

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.

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

All Unlived Emotions Turn To Inanity.

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

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

My Trunk, Valises And My Mind Are Overpacked.

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

I See Enormous Loves Growing Immense And Finally Crushing Me.

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.

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

Live In The Moment

Everything But Happiness Is Neurosis.

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.

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

One Handles Truths Like Dynamite.

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 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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

The Failures Are Not Due To Any Injustice, But To An Inner Defect. It Is Always Caused By The Person Himself. Yes, I Know, You Think You Are Doing An Act Of Justice. But They Will Only Suck You Dry, Wear Out Your Energy, Nourish Themselves On Your Ideas. After Being The Most Compassionate Man In The World, I Say To You Today: Let The Weak Ones Die, Let Them Commit Suicide.

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

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.

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.

We Cannot Cure The Evils Of Politics With Politics.

One May Gain One Truth At The Expense Of Another.

We Are Never Trapped Unless We Choose To Be.

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

It Amazes Me That You Feel That Each Time You Write A Story You Give Away One Of Your Dreams And You Feel The Poorer For It. But Then You Have Not Thought That This Dream Is Planted In Others, Others Begin To Live It Too, It Is Shared, It Is The Beginning Of Friendship And Love. How Is This World Made Which You Enjoy, The Friends Around Me That You Love? They Came Because I First Gave Away My Stories.

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

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

The Dream Has To Be Translated Into Reality.

Will You Come Down And Kiss Me Good Night?

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.

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

We Have Been Poisoned By Fairy Tales.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Writers Do Not Live One Life, They Live Two. There Is The Living And Then There Is The Writing. There Is The Second Tasting, The Delayed Reaction.

Pain Is Something To Master, Not To Wallow In.

Perhaps The Only Magician We Have Is The Artist.

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.

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

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

I Looked At It [revolver] As If It Reminded Me Of A Crime I Had Committed With An Irrepressible Smile Such As Rises Sometimes To People’s Lips In The Face Of Great Catastrophes Which Are Beyond Their Grasp, The Smile That Comes At Times On Certain Women’s Faces While They Are Saying They Regret The Harm They Have Done. It Is The Smile Of Nature Quietly And Proudly Asserting Its Natural Right To Kill.

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.

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.

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 Personal, If It Is Deep Enough, Becomes Universal, Mythical, Symbolic.

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.

I Want To Make My Own Discoveries…….penetrate The Evil Which Attracts Me

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

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.

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.

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

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.

There Are Only Two Kinds Of Freedom In The World; The Freedom Of The Rich And Powerful, And The Freedom Of The Artist And The Monk Who Renounces Possessions.

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

His Life Rushes Onward In Such Torrential Rhythm That...only Angels And Devils Can Catch The Tempo Of It.

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

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.

People Living Deeply Have No Fear Of Death.

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

Jazz Is The Music Of The Body.

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.

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.

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 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.

Societies In Decline Have No Use For Visionaries.

Atrophy Of Feeling Creates Criminals.

The Only Abnormality Is The Incapacity To 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.

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.

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.

You Fall In Love With People's Minds.

Falling In Love

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Inspirational Love

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

... America Is The Greatest Humiliator In Existence. It Is Always Cultivating The Power You Get From Humiliating Others.

I Love Your Silences, They Are Like Mine.

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

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.

New York Has An Electronic Heart.

Dreams Are Necessary To Life.

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

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.

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

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.

..he Made Me Understand Something Very Important. Whether Because I Am A Latin, Or Because I Am A Neurotic, I Have A Need Of Gestures. I Am Myself Expressive, Demonstrative; Every Feeling I Have Takes On Expression: Words, Gestures, Signs, Letters, Articulateness Or Action. I Need This In Others.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I Don’t Really Want To Become Normal, Average, Standard. I Want Merely To Gain In Strength, In The Courage To Live Out My Life More Fully, Enjoy More, Experience More. I Want To Develop Even More Original And More Unconventional Traits

I Am An Excitable Person Who Only Understands Life Lyrically, Musically, In Whom Feelings Are Much Stronger As Reason.

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

She Walked In The Shadow Of Rango With A Great Feeling Of Being Taken Out Of Herself, Of Having No Knowledge Of What Was Happening To Her, Merely A Pervading Sense Of Flow.

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

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.

Each Friend Represents A World In Us.

There Is Not One Big Cosmic Meaning For All, There Is Only The Meaning We Each Give To Our Life, An Individual Meaning, An Individual Plot, Like An Individual Novel, A Book For Each Person.

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

The Earth Is Heavy And Opaque Without Dreams.

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

At First She Beckoned And Lured One Into Her World; Then, She Blurred The Passageways, Confused All The Images, As If To Elude Detection.

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.

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.

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

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

Trending Author

Charles Baudelaire

Category