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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.

-Anais Nin

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What A Mystery This

Anais Nin

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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.

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There Were Always In Me, Two Women At Least, One Woman Desperate And Bewildered, Who Felt She Was Drowning And Another Who Would Leap Into A Scene, As Upon A Stage, Conceal Her True Emotions Because They Were Weaknesses, Helplessness, Despair, And Present To The World Only A Smile, An Eagerness, Curiosity, Enthusiasm, Interest.

I'm Sick Of My Own Romanticism!

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

Leaves In The Wind

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.

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.

Violence Is A Symptom Of Impotence.

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

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

Anxiety Is Loves Greatest Killer.

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

Inspirational Love

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

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.

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?

My First Vision Of Earth Was Water Veiled. I Am Of The Race Of Men And Women Who See All Things Through This Curtain Of Sea And My Eyes Are The Color Of Water.

Our Love Lives Because I Live.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Stations And Airports Are Rehearsals For Separations By Death.

A Man Fell In Love With Jeanne, And She Tried To Love Him. But She Complained That He Uttered Such Ordinary Words, That He Could Never Say The Magic Phrase Which Would Open Her Being.

Too Late For Changes, Too Late Perhaps For Explanations And Ideological Webs, But The Love Goes On, The Love Goes On, Blind To Laws And Warnings And Even To Wisdom And To Fears. And Whatever That Love Is, Perhaps An Illusion Of A New Love, I Want It, I Cant Resist It, My Whole Being Melts In One Kiss, My Knowledge Melts, My Fears Melt, My Blood Dances, My Legs Open.

We Are Never Trapped Unless We Choose To Be.

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

Jazz Is The Music Of The Body.

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.

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

To Lie, Of Course, Is To Engender Insanity.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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.

Life Is Truly Known Only To Those Who Suffer, Lose, Endure Adversity And Stumble From Defeat To Defeat.

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

We Have Been Poisoned By Fairy Tales.

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.

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 Would Like To Have Your Sureness. I Am Waiting For Love, The Core Of A Woman's Life." Don't Wait For It," I Said. "create A World, Your World. Alone. Stand Alone. And Then Love Will Come To You, Then It Comes To You. It Was Only When I Wrote My First Book That The World I Wanted To Live In Opened To Me.

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.

Hollywood Is A Mirage Factory.

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

Adolescence Is Like Cactus.

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

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.’

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

The Most Important Human Endeavor Is The Striving For Morality In Our Actions. Our Inner Balance And Even Our Very Existence Depend On It. Only Morality In Our Actions Can Give Beauty And Dignity To Life. Albert Einstein It Is The Function Of Art To Renew Our Perception. What We Are Familiar With We Cease To See. The Writer Shakes Up The Familiar Scene, And, As If By Magic, We See A New Meaning In It.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Nowhere Is Inhumanity More Revealed Than In Hospitals.

Solitude May Rust Your Words.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Good Things Happen To Those Who Hustle.

Hustle And Bustle

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.

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

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

I Had A Feeling That Pandora's Box Contained The Mysteries Of Woman's Sensuality, So Different From A Man's And For Which Man's Language Was So Inadequate. The Language Of Sex Had Yet To Be Invented. The Language Of The Senses Was Yet To Be Explored.

I See Myself Wrapped In Lies, Which Do Not Seem To Penetrate My Soul, As If They Are Not Really A Part Of Me. They Are Like Costumes.

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

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

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

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.

Write. Write Until It Stops Hurting.

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.

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

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

Creation Which Cannot Express Itself Becomes Madness.

The Unconscious Can Become Destructive If It Is Disregarded And Thwarted.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

What I Cannot Love, I Overlook. Is That Real Friendship?

The Leaf Fall Of His Words, The Stained Glass Hues Of His Moods, The Rust In His Voice, The Smoke In His Mouth, His Breath On My Vision Like Human Breath Blinding A Mirror.

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

I Have No Fear Of God, And Yet Fear Keeps Me Awake At Night,fear Of The Devil. And If I Believe In The Devil, I Must Believe In God. And If Evil Is Abhorrent To Me, I Must Be A Saint. Henry, Save Me From Beatification, From The Horrors Of Static Perfection. Precipitate Me Into The Inferno.

Someone Told Me The Delightful Story Of The Crusader Who Put A Chastity Belt On His Wife And Gave The Key To His Best Friend For Safekeeping, In Case Of His Death. He Had Ridden Only A Few Miles Away When His Friend, Riding Hard, Caught Up With Him, Saying 'you Gave Me The Wrong Key!

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Every Individual Is Representative Of The Whole . . . And Should Be Intimately Understood, And This Would Give A Far Greater Understanding Of Mass Movements And Sociology.

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

[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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Experience Teaches Acceptance Of The Imperfect As Life.

Your Eyes Make Me Shy

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

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

The Truly Faithless One Is The One Who Makes Love To Only A Fraction Of You. And Denies The Rest.

I Walked Into My Own Book, Seeking Peace. It Was Night, And I Made A Careless Movement Inside The Dream; I Turned Too Brusquely The Corner And I Bruised Myself Against My Madness.

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.

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.

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

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

Dreams Are Essential To Life.

With Her Eyes Alone She Could Give This Response, This Absolutely Erotic Response, As If Febrile Waves Were Trembling There, Pools Of Madness... Something Devouring That Could Lick A Man All Over Like A Flame, Annihilate Him, With A Pleasure Never Known Before.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Passion Gives Me Moments Of Wholeness.

I Believe The Lasting Revolution Comes From Deep Changes In Ourselves Which Influence Our Collective Life.

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

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 Final Lesson A Writer Learns Is That Everything Can Nourish The Writer. The Dictionary, A New Word, A Voyage, An Encounter, A Talk On The Street, A Book, A Phrase Learned.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

My Diary Seems To Keep Me Whole.

In My Dreams I Sleep With Everybody.

Gold Never Comes To The Dreamers - Except In Dreams.

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.

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.

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.

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

Everything But Happiness Is Neurosis.

When I Cannot Bear Outer Pressures Anymore, I Begin To Put Order In My Belongings...as If Unable To Organize And Control My Life, I Seek To Exert This On The World Of Objects.

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

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

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

All Of My Creation Is An Effort To Weave A Web Of Connection With The World: I Am Always Weaving It Because It Was Once Broken.

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.

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.

The Earth Is Heavy And Opaque Without Dreams.

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

In Music I Feel Most Deeply The Passing Of Things.

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

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

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

I Am Lonely, Yet Not Everybody Will Do. I Don't Know Why, Some People Fill The Gaps And Others Emphasize My Loneliness. In Reality Those Who Satisfy Me Are Those Who Simply Allow Me To Live With My ''idea Of Them.

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

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

The Ivory Tower Of The Artist May Be The Only Stronghold Left For Human Values, Cultural Treasures, Man’s Cult Of Beauty.

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

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

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?

Great Repressions Create Dualities.

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.

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 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.

At Sixteen, Sabina Took Moon Baths, First Of All, Because Everyone Else Took Sun Baths, And Second, She Admitted, Because She Had Been Told It Was Dangerous.

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.

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