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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.

-Anais Nin

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The Source Of Sexual

Anais Nin

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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.

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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?

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.

... Only Love Begets Love.

I Will Always Be The Virgin-prostitute, The Perverse Angel, The Two-faced Sinister And Saintly Woman.

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.

Destruction Is Ultimately Self-destruction.

Self Destruction

The Complaints Of The Child In Us Will Never Cease Lamenting Until It Is Consoled, Answered, Understood. Only Then Will It Lie Still In Us, Like Our Fears. It Will Die In Peace And Leave Us What The Child Leaves To The Man - The Sense Of Wonder.

All The Art Of Analysis Consists In Saying A Truth Only When The Other Person Is Ready For It, Has Been Prepared For It By An Organic Process Of Gradation And Evolution.

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

The Secret Of Joy Is The Mastery Of Pain.

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.

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

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

Hollywood Is A Mirage Factory.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

..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.

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

You Fall In Love With People's Minds.

Falling In Love

If I Fall Asleep, It Is Because I Am Overloaded. I Sleep Because One Hour With Henry Contains Five Years Of My Life, And One Phrase, One Caress Answers The Expectations Of A Hundred Nights. When I Hear Him Laugh, I Say, "i Have Heard Rabelais.". And I Swallow His Laughter Like Bread And Wine.

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

Dreams Are Necessary To Life.

To Commit Suicide Is Easy. To Live Without A God Is More Difficult. The Drunkenness Of Triumph Is Greater Than The Drunkenness Of Sacrifice.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Everything With Me Is Either Worship And Passion Or Pity And Understanding. I Hate Rarely, Though When I Hate. I Hate Murderously.

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.

Passion Gives Me Moments Of Wholeness.

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.

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

When One Is Pretending The Entire Body Revolts.

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

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Life Is A Process Of Becoming, A Combination Of States We Have To Go Through. Where People Fail Is That They Wish To Elect A State And Remain In It. This Is A Kind Of Death.

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

But The Artist Persists Because He Has The Will To Create, And This Is The Magic Power Which Can Transform And Transfigure And Transpose And Which Will Ultimately Be Transmitted To Others.

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

The Shell Is America's Most Active Contribution To The Formation Of Character. A Tough Hide. Grow It Early.

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.

Either One Fails In One's Art Or In One's Life.

We Have Been Poisoned By Fairy Tales.

When You Possess Light Within, You See It Externally.

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

If What Proust Says Is True, That Happiness Is The Absence Of Fever, Then I Will Never Know Happiness. For I Am Possessed By A Fever For Knowledge, Experience, And Creation.

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.

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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.

I Want To Be A Writer Who Reminds Others That These Moments Exist; I Want To Prove That There Is Infinite Space, Infinite Meaning, Infinite Dimension

You Are The Poet, You Walk Inside My Dreams.

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 Live Out The Confusions Until They Become Clear.

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

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

You Cannot Save People. You Can Only Love Them.

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

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.

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

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

Dreams Are Essential To Life.

People Who Want A Sane, Static, Measurable World Take The First Aspect Of An Event Or Person And Stick To It, With An Almost Self-protective Obstinacy, Or By A Natural Limitation Of Their Imaginations. They Do Not Indulge In Either Deepening Or Magnifying.

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

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.

To Love And To Labor Is The Sum Of Living.

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.

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

I Cannot Concentrate All My Friendship On Any Single One Of My Friends Because No One Is Complete Enough In Himself.

Cute Best Friend

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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 Have Seen Romanticism Outlast The Realistic. I Have Seen Men Forget The Beautiful Women They Have Possessed, Forget The Prostitutes, And Remember The First Woman They Idolized, The Woman They Could Never Have. The Woman Who Aroused Them Romantically Holds Them.

Everything But Happiness Is Neurosis.

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.

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.

Jazz Is The Music Of The Body. The Breath Comes Through Brass. It Is The Body's Breath, And The Strings' Wails And Moans Are Echoes Of The Body's Music. It Is The Body's Vibrations Which Ripple From The Fingers. And The Mystery Of The Withheld Theme, Known To Jazz Musicians Alone, Is Like The Mystery Of Our Secret Life. We Give To Others Only Peripheral Improvisations.

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.

Guilt Is The One Burden Human Beings Can't Bear Alone.

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.

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

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

The Earth Is Heavy And Opaque Without Dreams.

Poetry, Which Is Our Relation To The Senses, Enables Us To Retain A Living Relationship To All Things. It Is The Quickest Means Of Transportation To Reach Dimensions Above Or Beyond The Traps Set By The So-called Realists. It Is A Way To Learn Levitation And Travel In Liberated Continents, To Travel By Moonlight As Well As Sunlight.

There Are Many Ways To Be Free. One Of Them Is To Transcend Reality By Imagination, As I Try To Do.

One May Gain One Truth At The Expense Of Another.

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.

The Dream Has To Be Translated Into Reality.

There Are Books Which We Read Early In Life, Which Sink Into Our Consciousness And Seem To Disappear Without Leaving A Trace. And Then One Day We Find, In Some Summing-up Of Our Life And Put Attitudes Towards Experience, That Their Influence Has Been Enormous.

Creation Which Cannot Express Itself Becomes Madness.

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

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

Will You Come Down And Kiss Me Good Night?

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.

[in The]..curious Way That My Idealism Has Been Mixed With My Fatalism, So That I Can Possess The Soul Of A Dreamer And That Of A Cynic At The Same Time......i Possess A Power Of Magic...[to] Destroy The Balance Of A Well-designed Destiny With My Diabolical Mind.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Atrophy Of Feeling Creates Criminals.

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

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.

One Handles Truths Like Dynamite. Literature Is One Vast Hypocrisy, A Giant Deception, Treachery. All Writers Have Concealed More Than They Revealed.

My Mission, Should I Choose To Accept It, Is To Find Peace With Exactly Who And What I Am. To Take Pride In My Thoughts, My Appearance, My Talents, My Flaws And To Stop This Incessant Worrying That I Can’t Be Loved As I Am.

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.

That Is My Essential Reason For Writing, Not For Fame, Not To Be Celebrated After Death, But To Heighten And Create Life All Around Me. I Also Write Because When I Am Writing I Reach The High Moment Of Fusion Sought By The Mystics, The Poets, The Lovers, A Sense Of Communion With The Universe.

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.

Then At Certain Moments I Remember One Of His Words And I Suddenly Feel The Sensual Woman Flaring Up, As If Violently Caressed. I Say The Word To Myself, With Joy. It Is At Such A Moment That My True Body Lives.

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 Unconscious Can Become Destructive If It Is Disregarded And Thwarted.

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.

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.

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

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

Great Repressions Create Dualities.

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.

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

The Softness Of The Summer Day Like An Ermine Paw.

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.

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

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

Ordinary Life Does Not Interest Me. I Seek Only The High Moments. I Am In Accord With The Surrealists, Searching For The Marvelous.

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.

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.

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.

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

The Obstacle Became His Alibi For Weakness.

Those Who Cannot Live Fully Often Become Destroyers Of Life.

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.

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

Anxiety Is Loves Greatest Killer.

The Self Is Merely The Lens Through Which We See Others And The World.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

A Leaf Fluttered In Through The Window This Morning, As If Supported By The Rays Of The Sun, A Bird Settled On The Fire Escape, Joy In The Task Of Coffee, Joy Accompanied Me As I Walked.

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.

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

Gold Never Comes To The Dreamers - Except In Dreams.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

New York Has An Electronic Heart.

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

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

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.

I Have This Weird Obsession About Buying Books And Looking At Them With A Smile, Even If I Won't Read Them Soon. At Least They Are Mine Now.

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

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

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.

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

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

It Is A Sign Of Great Inner Insecurity To Be Hostile To The Unfamiliar.

We Are Never Trapped Unless We Choose To Be.

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.

Stations And Airports Are Rehearsals For Separations By Death.

Although I Love A Rich Life, I Hate An Overcrowded Life. I Believe In Rumination And Lose Half The Beauty Of All Things When I Am Deprived Of The Time To Ruminate.

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.

I Want To Hear Raucous Music, To See Faces, To Brush Against Bodies, To Drink Fiery Benedictine. Beautiful Women And Handsome Men Arouse Fierce Desires In Me. I Want To Dance. I Want Drugs. I Want To Know Perverse People, To Be Intimate With Them. I Never Look At Naive Faces. I Want To Bite Into Life, And To Be Torn By It.

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.

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.

I Don't Mind Working, Holding My Ground Intellectually, Artistically; But As A Woman, Oh, God, As A Woman I Want To Be Dominated

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

I Must Be A Mermaid, Rango. I Have No Fear Of Depths And A Great Fear Of Shallow Living.

In My Dreams I Sleep With Everybody.

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

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

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.

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

One Handles Truths Like Dynamite.

[on Paris:] A City Never Entirely Known, Yet Which Gives You The Feeling Of Intimacy, Of Possessing It Intimately.

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.

Violence Is A Symptom Of Impotence.

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Elizabeth Bishop

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