Background Image

...

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.

-Anais Nin

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Writer Is The

Anais Nin

...

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.

Views: 47648

Topic

More From Anais Nin

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.

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.

If I Love You It Means We Share The Same Fantasies, The Same Madnesses

If You Do Not Breathe Through Writing, If You Do Not Cry Out In Writing, Or Sing In Writing, Then Don't Write, Because Our Culture Has No Use For It.

I Want To Fall In Love In Such A Way That The Mere Sight Of A Man, Even A Block Away From Me, Will Shake And Pierce Me, Will Weaken Me, And Make Me Tremble And Soften And Melt.

Falling In Love

But I Lie. I Embellish. My Words Are Not Deep Enough. They Disguise, They Conceal. I Will Not Rest Until I Have Told Of My Descent Into A Sensuality Which Was As Dark, As Magnificent, As Wild, As My Moments Of Mystic Creation Have Been Dazzling, Ecstatic, Exalted.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

I Am Apparently Gentle, Unstable, And Full Of Pretenses. I Will Die A Poet Killed By The Nonpoets, Will Renounce No Dream, Resign Myself To No Ugliness, Accept Nothing Of The World But The One I Made Myself. I Wrote, Lived, Loved Like Don Quixote, And On The Day Of My Death I Will Say: ‘excuse Me, It Was All A Dream,’ And By That Time I May Have Found One Who Will Say: ‘not At All, It Was True, Absolutely True.’

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

I Palliate The Sufferings Of Others. Yes I See Myself As Softening The Blows, Dissolving Acids, Neutralizing Poisons, Every Moment Of The Day. I Try To Fulfill The Wishes Of Others, To Perform Miracles. I Exert Myself Performing Miracles.

Suffering Of Others

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.

One May Gain One Truth At The Expense Of Another.

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.

Gold Never Comes To The Dreamers - Except In Dreams.

When She Closed Her Eyes She Felt He Had Many Hands, Which Touched Her Everywhere, And Many Mouths, Which Passed So Swiftly Over Her, And With A Wolflike Sharpness, His Teeth Sank Into Her Fleshiest Parts. Naked Now, He Lay His Full Length Over Her. She Enjoyed His Weight On Her, Enjoyed Being Crushed Under His Body. She Wanted Him Soldered To Her, From Mouth To Feet. Shivers Passed Through Her Body.

Anxiety Is Loves Greatest Killer.

I Believe One Writes Because One Has To Create A World In Which One Can Live.

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

Analysis Does Not Take Into Account The Creative Products Of Neurotic Desires.

Ordinary Life Does Not Interest Me. I Seek Only The High Moments. I Am In Accord With The Surrealists, Searching For The Marvelous. 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. But I Am Not Always In What I Call A State Of Grace. I Have Days Of Illuminations And Fevers. I Have Days When The Music In My Head Stops. Then I Mend Socks, Prune Trees, Can Fruits, Polish Furniture. But While I Am Doing This I Feel I Am Not Living.

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.

Nowhere Is Inhumanity More Revealed Than In Hospitals.

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.

We Are Never Trapped Unless We Choose To Be.

I Love Man As Creator, Lover, Husband, Friend, But Man The Father I Do Not Trust. I Do Not Believe In Man As Father. I Do Not Trust Man As Father.

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

Everything But Happiness Is Neurosis.

I Told Her, "we Have Both Lost Ourselves, But Sometimes We Reveal The Most When We Are Least Like Ourselves. I Am Not Trying To Think Any More. I Can't Think When I Am With You. You Are Like Me, Wishing For A Perfect Moment, But Nothing Too Long Imagined Can Be Perfect In A Worldly Way. Neither One Of Us Can Say Just The Right Thing. We Are Overwhelmed. Let Us Be Overwhelmed. It Is So Lovely, So Lovely. I Love You June.

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.

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.

My Diary Seems To Keep Me Whole.

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

Inspirational Love

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

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.

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 Was Thinking Of My Patients, And How The Worst Moment For Them Was When They Discovered They Were Masters Of Their Own Fate. It Was Not A Matter Of Bad Or Good Luck. When They Could No Longer Blame Fate, They Were In Despair.

Love Never Dies A Natural Death. It Dies Because We Don't Know How To Replenish Its Source. It Dies Of Blindness And Errors And Betrayals. It Dies Of Illness And Wounds; It Dies Of Weariness, Of Witherings, Of Tarnishings.

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

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

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

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.

Introspection Is A Devouring Monster.

Passion Gives Me Moments Of Wholeness.

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.

When I Stand At The Top Of The Champs-elysées, With Its Chestnut Trees In Flower, Its Undulations Of Shining Cars, Its White Spaciousness, I Feel As If I Were Biting Into A Utopian Fruit, Something Velvety And Lustrous And Rich And Vivid.

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

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.

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

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

I Stopped Loving My Father A Long Time Ago. What Remained Was The Slavery To A Pattern.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

In Every Relationship, Sooner Or Later, There Is A Court Scene. Accusations, Counter-accusations, A Trial, A Verdict.

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

He Has, Like Me, A Sense Of Smell. I Let Him Inhale Me, Then I Slip Away.

Hollywood Is A Mirage Factory.

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 Walk Ahead Of Myself In Perpetual Expectancy Of Miracles.

Stations And Airports Are Rehearsals For Separations By Death.

Notes Fly So Much Farther Than Words. There Is No Other Way To Reach The Infinite.

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

My Trunk, Valises And My Mind Are Overpacked.

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.

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

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

The Violence And Obscenity Are Left Unadulterated, As Manifestation Of The Mystery And Pain Which Ever Accompanies The Act Of Creation.

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

The Love Of Only One Man Or One Woman Is An Enclosure.

Many Couples, Many People, Are Not Living With Real Human Beings, But With Their Ghosts. Who Has Not Followed For Years The Spell Of A Particular Tone Of Voice, From Voice To Voice, As The Fetishist Follows A Beautiful Foot, Scarcely Seeing The Woman Herself? A Voice, A Mouth, An Eye, All Stemming From The Original Fountain Of Our First Desire, Directing It, Enslaving Us, Until We Choose To Unravel The Fatal Web And Free Ourselves.

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."

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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 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.

I Am Only Responsible For My Own Heart, You Offered Yours Up For The Smashing My Darling. Only A Fool Would Give Out Such A Vital Organ

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

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

In Music I Feel Most Deeply The Passing Of Things.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

... And The Very Folds Of The Curtains Contained Secrets And Sighs.

... Only Love Begets Love.

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.

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

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

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

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.

I Was Stirred Only Like A Leaf In The Wind, That Is All. . .

Leaves In The Wind

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

The Only Abnormality Is The Incapacity To Love.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

She Was Fully, Painfully Aware That Very Rarely Did Midnight Strike In Two Hearts At Once, Very Rarely Did Midnight Arouse Two Different Equal Desires, And That Any Dislocation In This, Any Indifference, Was An Indication Of Disunity, Of The Difficulties, The Impossibilities Of Fusion Between Two Human Beings.

I Needed To Live, But I Also Needed To Record What I Lived.

I Seek The Real Stuff Of Life. Profound Drama.

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

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.

To Lie, Of Course, Is To Engender Insanity.

A Trite Word Is An Overused Word Which Has Lost Its Identity Like An Old Coat In A Second-hand Shop. The Familiar Grows Dull And We No Longer See, Hear, Or Taste It.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

I Love The Abstract, Delicate, Profound, Vague, Voluptuously Wordless Sensation Of Living Ecstatically.

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.

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.

The Dangerous Time When Mechanical Voices, Radios, Telephones, Take The Place Of Human Intimacies, And The Concept Of Being In Touch With Millions Brings A Greater And Greater Poverty In Intimacy And Human Vision.

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.

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

The Earth Is Heavy And Opaque Without Dreams.

Love Never Dies A Natural Death. It Dies Because We Don't Know How To Replenish Its Source.

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.

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

Death From Disillusion Is Not Instantaneous, And There Are No Mercy Killers For The Disillusioned.

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

We Also Write To Heighten Our Own Awareness Of Life... We Write To Taste Life Twice, In The Moment, And In Retrospection... We Write To Be Able To Transcend Our Life, To Reach Beyond It...to Teach Ourselves To Speak With Others, To Record The Journey Into The Labyrinth. We Write To Expand Our World When We Feel Strangled, Or Constricted, Or Lonely... When I Don't Write, I Feel My World Shrinking... I Feel I Lose My Fire And My Color.

All Unlived Emotions Turn To Inanity.

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

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

Now That I Am Moving, I Am Afraid. Where Am I Going?

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

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.

I Want To Live Darkly And Richly In My Femaleness.

Empowering Women

The Theme Of The Diary Is Always The Personal, But It Does Not Mean Only A Personal Story: It Means A Personal Relationship To All Things And People. The Personal, If It Is Deep Enough, Becomes Universal, Mythical, Symbolic; I Never Generalize, Intellectualise. I See, I Hear, I Feel. These Are My Primitive Elements Of Discovery. Music, Dance, Poetry And Painting Are The Channels For Emotion. It Is Through Them That Experience Penetrates Our Bloodstream.

In My Dreams I Sleep With Everybody.

Is Devotion To Others A Cover For The Hungers And The Needs Of The Self, Of Which One Is Ashamed? I Was Always Ashamed To Take. So I Gave. It Was Not Virtue. It Was A Disguise.

Stories Are The Only Enchantment Possible, For When We Begin To See Our Suffering As A Story, We Are Saved.

Dreams Are Essential To Life.

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.

Nothing Too Long Imagined Can Be Perfect In A Wordly Way.

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.

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.

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

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

I Cheat Him, I Deceive Him, Yet The World Does Not Sink In Sulphur-colored Mists. Madness Conquers. I Can No Longer Put My Mosaics Together. I Just Cry And Laugh.

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.

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

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 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.

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

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

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.

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.

Perhaps The Only Magician We Have Is The Artist.

I Can Elect Something I Love And Absorb Myself In It.

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.

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

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

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.

What We Call Our Destiny Is Truly Our Character And That Character Can Be Altered. The Knowledge That We Are Responsible For Our Actions And Attitudes Does Not Need To Be Discouraging, Because It Also Means That We Are Free To Change This Destiny. One Is Not In Bondage To The Past, Which Has Shaped Our Feelings, To Race, Inheritance, Background. All This Can Be Altered If We Have The Courage To Examine How It Formed Us. We Can Alter The Chemistry Provided We Have The Courage To Dissect The Elements.

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

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.

Dreams Are Necessary To Life.

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

Shame Is The Lie Someone Told You About Yourself.

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.

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.

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

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

Pain Is Something To Master, Not To Wallow In.

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

Different Peoples

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.

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

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

Trending Author

Wilma Mankiller

Category