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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.

-Anais Nin

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The Same Chemicals Were

Anais Nin

...

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.

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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.

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

People Living Deeply Have No Fear Of Death.

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.

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

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.

I'm Sick Of My Own Romanticism!

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.

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

Writing More And More To The Sound Of Music, Writing More And More Like Music. Sitting In My Studio Tonight, Playing Record After Record, Writing, Music A Stimulant Of The Highest Order, Far More Potent Than Wine.

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

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

Those Who Cannot Live Fully Often Become Destroyers Of Life.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Often See How You Sob Over What You Destroy, How You Want To Stop And Just Worship; And You Do Stop, And Then A Moment Later You Are At It Again With A Knife, Like A Surgeon.

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

We Are Never Trapped Unless We Choose To Be.

The Bed Must Be A Beautiful Place, Not Only Because You Make Love There But Because You Dream There As Well.

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

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

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

Sometimes We Reveal Ourselves When We Are Least Like Ourselves.

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.

I Really Believe That If I Were Not A Writer, Not A Creator, Not An Experimenter, I Might Have Been A Very Faithful Wife. I Think Highly Of Faithfulness. But My Temperament Belongs To The Writer, Not To The Woman

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

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

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

I Am An Excitable Person Who Only Understands Life Lyrically, Musically, In Whom Feelings Are Much Stronger As Reason. I Am So Thirsty For The Marvelous That Only The Marvelous Has Power Over Me. Anything I Can Not Transform Into Something Marvelous, I Let Go. Reality Doesn't Impress Me. I Only Believe In Intoxication, In Ecstasy, And When Ordinary Life Shackles Me, I Escape, One Way Or Another. No More Walls.

I 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.

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

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

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

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

I Love Your Silences, They Are Like Mine.

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

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

Different Peoples

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.

What Everyone Forgets Is That Passion Is Not Merely A Heightened Sensual Fusion But A Way Of Life Which Produces, As In The Mystics, An Ecstatic Awareness Of The Whole Of Life.

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

He Was Jealous Of Her Future, And She Of His Past.

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.

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.

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

Societies In Decline Have No Use For Visionaries.

To Love And To Labor Is The Sum Of Living.

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

She Had Acquired Some Of His Gypsy Ways, Some Of His Nonchalance, His Bohemian Indiscipline. She Had Swung With Him Into The Disorders Of Strewn Clothes, Spilled Cigarette Ashes, Slipping Into Bed All Dressed, Falling Asleep Thus, Indolence, Timelessness...a Region Of Chaos And Moonlight. She Liked It There.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

I Gathered Poets Around Me And We All Wrote Beautiful Erotica. As We Were Condemned To Focus Only On Sensuality, We Had Violent Explosions Of Poetry. Writing Erotica Became A Road To Sainthood Rather Than To Debauchery.

I 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 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.

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

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

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

I Prefer By Far The Warmth And Softness To Mere Brilliancy And Coldness. Some People Remind Me Of Sharp Dazzling Diamonds. Valuable But Lifeless And Loveless. Others, Of The Simplest Field Flowers, With Hearts Full Of Dew And With All The Tints Of Celestial Beauty Reflected In Their Modest Petals.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Big Business And Politics Are Twins, They Are The Monsters Who Kill Everything, Corrupt Everything.

The Struggle To Emerge Out Of The Past, Clean Of Memories; The Inadequacy Of Our Hearts To Cut Life Into Separate And Final Portions; The Pain Of This Constant Ambivalence And Interrelation Of Emotions; The Hunger For Frontiers Against Which We Might Learn As Upon Closed Doors Before We Proceed Forward; The Struggle Against Diffusion, New Beginnings, Against Finality In Acts Without Finality Or End, In Our Cursedly Repercussive Being.

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.

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."

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.

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

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

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.

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.

You Cannot Save People. You Can Only Love Them.

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.

If One's Conscious Life Is Too Rigid, Too Regimented, Then The Surface May Crack At Times, And We Are Unprepared For The Strange Emotions Or Sensations We Experience.

The Monster I Kill Every Day Is The Monster Of Realism. The Monster Who Attacks Me Every Day Is Destruction. Out Of The Duel Comes The Transformation. I Turn Destruction Into Creation Over And Over Again.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The Source Of Sexual Power Is Curiosity, Passion. You Are Watching Its Little Flame Die Of Asphyxiation. Sex Does Not Thrive On Monotony. Without Feeling, Inventions, Moods, No Surprises In Bed. Sex Must Be Mixed With Tears, Laughter, Words, Promises, Scenes, Jealousy, Envy, All Of The Spices Of Fear, Foreign Travel, New Faces, Novels, Stories, Dreams, Fantasies, Music, Dancing, Opium, Wine.

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

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

Inspirational Life

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

If All Of Us Acted In Unison As I Act Individually There Would Be No Wars And No Poverty. I Have Made Myself Personally Responsible For The Fate Of Every Human Being Who Has Come My Way.

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

For All Of My Patients Sensuality Is A Giving In To 'the Low Side Of Their Nature.' Puritanism Is Powerful And Distorts Their Life With A Total Anesthesia Of The Senses. If You Atrophy One Sense, You Also Atrophy All The Others, A Sensuous And Physical Connection With Nature, With Art, With Food, With Other Human Beings.

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

I Like Extravagance. Letters Which Give The Postman A Stiff Back To Carry, Books Which Overflow From Their Covers, Sexuality Which Bursts The Thermometers.

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?

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.

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

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

Poetry Is The Alchemy Which Teaches Us To Convert Ordinary Materials Into Gold.

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.

We Don't See Things As They Are, We See Them As We ... Believe Me Naïve Or Innocent, Who Has The Courage To Treat Me Like A Woman.

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.

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

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.

My Trunk, Valises And My Mind Are Overpacked.

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

I 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

Pain Is Something To Master, Not To Wallow In.

We Do Not Grow Absolutely, Chronologically. We Grow Sometimes In One Dimension, And Not In Another, Unevenly. We Grow Partially. We Are Relative. We Are Mature In One Realm, Childish In Another. The Past, Present, And Future Mingle And Pull Us Backward, Forward, Or Fix Us In The Present. We Are Made Of Layers, Cells, Constellations.

I Miss The Animal Buoyancy Of New York, The Animal Vitality. I Did Not Mind That It Had No Meaning And No Depth.

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.

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.

We Don't See Things As They Are, We See Them As We Are." Life Shrinks Or Expands In Proportion To One's Courage "people Living Deeply Have No Fear Of Death.

Inspirational Life

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

When One Is Pretending The Entire Body Revolts.

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

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

Dreams Are Necessary To Life.

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.

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

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

I Believe That In Judging Our Actions We Are More Severe Than Professional Judges. We Judge Not Only Our Actions, But Our Thoughts, Our Intentions, Our Secret Curses, Our Hidden Hate.

Gold Never Comes To The Dreamers - Except In Dreams.

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.

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

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!

Love Men And Women Not For Their Strength But Their Softness, Not For Their Fullness But Their Hunger, Not For Their Plenty But Their Need.

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

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

Three Or Four Threads May Be Agitated, Like Telegraph Wires, At The Same Time, And If I Were To Tap Them All I Would Reveal Such A Mixture Of Innocence And Duplicity, Generosity And Calculation, Fear And Courage, I Cannot Tell The Whole Truth Simply Because I Would Have To Write Four Journals At Once.

The Child Who Is Uprooted Begins To Recognize That What He Builds Within Himself Is What Will Endure, What Will Withstand Shattering Experiences.

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

Everything But Happiness Is Neurosis.

There Are Two Ways To Reach Me: By Way Of Kisses Or By Way Of The Imagination. But There Is A Hierarchy: The Kisses Alone Don't Work.

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

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.

Your Strength Is Soft, Indirect, Delicate, Tender, Womanly. But It Is Strength Just The Same.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 Want To Live Darkly And Richly In My Femaleness. I Want A Man Lying Over Me, Always Over Me. His Will, His Pleasure, His Desire, His Life, His Work, His Sexuality The Touchstone, The Command, My Pivot. I Don’t Mind Working, Holding My Ground Intellectually, Artistically; But As A Woman, Oh, God, As A Woman I Want To Be Dominated

I Did Not Feel Drawn To Huxley. He Was Beautiful Physically But Again Without Vibrations Or Sensory Antennae... And I Had A Painful Impression Of A Psychic Blindness. With All His Science And Knowledge, In The Mystic World He Blundered.

The Body Is An Instrument Which Only Gives Off Music When It Is Used As A Body. Always An Orchestra, And Just As Music Traverses Walls, So Sensuality Traverses The Body And Reaches Up To Ecstasy.

It Is My Secrecy Which Makes You Unhappy, My Evasions, My Silences. And So I Have Found A Solution. Whenever You Get Desperate With My Mysteries, My Ambiguities, Here Is A Set Of Chinese Puzzle Boxes. You Have Always Said That I Was Myself A Chinese Puzzle Box. When You Are In The Mood And I Baffle Your Love Of Confidences, Your Love Of Openness, Your Love Of Sharing Experiences, Then Open One Of The Boxes. And In It You Will Find A Story, A Story About Me And My Life. Do You Like This Idea? Do You Think It Will Help Us To Live Together?

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 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.

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 Obstacle Became His Alibi For Weakness.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Perfection Is Static, And I Am In Full Progress.

We Are Beginning To See The Influence Of Dream Upon Reality And Reality Upon Dream.

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

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.

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.

It Is In The Movements Of Emotional Crisis That Human Beings Reveal Themselves Most Accurately.

All Unlived Emotions Turn To Inanity.

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

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.

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.

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.

In Creation Alone There Is The Possibility Of Perfection.

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.

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

You Are The Poet, You Walk Inside My Dreams.

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.

In Music I Feel Most Deeply The Passing Of Things.

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

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.

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

I Am In Great Terror Of Your Understanding By Which You Penetrate Into My World; And Then I Stand Revealed And I Have Shared My Kingdom With You.

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

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

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

We Efface An Hour By Passionate Love, Without Twists, Without Aftertaste. When It Is Finished, It Is Not Finished, We Lie Still In Each Other's Arms Lulled By Our Love, By Tenderness -- Sensuality In Which The Whole Being Can Participate.

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

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

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