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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.

-Anais Nin

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Why Do I Doubt

Anais Nin

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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.

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

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Empowering Women

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

Only The United Beat Of Sex And Heart Together Can Create Ecstasy.

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

Societies In Decline Have No Use For Visionaries.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.’

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.

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

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

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

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

I, With A Deeper Instinct, Choose A Man Who Compels My Strength, Who Makes Enormous Demands On Me, Who Does Not Doubt My Courage Or My Toughness, Who Does Not Believe Me Naive Or Innocent, Who Has The Courage To Treat Me Like A Woman.

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

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

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

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

He Had A Mania For Washing And Disinfecting Himself. . . . For Him The Only Danger Came From The Microbes That Attacked The Body. He Had Not Studied The Microbe Of Conscience Which Eats Into The Soul.

You Live Out The Confusions Until They Become Clear.

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

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.

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.

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