How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.
“
| — | By Anaïs Nin (via larmoyante) |
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.
“
| — | By Anaïs Nin (via decembrist) |
You discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom, absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an illness- monotony, boredom, and death. Millions live like this, or die like this, without knowing. And then some shock treatment takes place- a person, a book, a song, and then it awakens them and saves them from death.
“
| — | By Anaïs Nin (via inmygalaxie) |
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
“
| — | From The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol I: 1931-1934 by Anais Nin (via itsfromabook) |
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.
“
| — | From The Diary of Anais Nin by Anais Nin |
It was as if it [my past] had happened to someone else, and the interest I took in its episodes was that of a writer who recognized good material. It was not an unimportant phase of my life, it was my first confrontation with the world. It was a period when I discovered I was not ugly, a very important discovery for a woman.
“
| — | From The Diary of Anais Nin 1934-1939 by Anais Nin |
I have to keep racing to avoid my past catching up with me and strangling me. I have to live very fast, place many people and incidents between my past and me, because it is still a burden and a ghost.
“
| — | From The Diary of Anais Nin 1934-1939 by Anais Nin |
I was not a scientist. I was seeking a form of life which would be continuous like a symphony. The key word was the sea. It was this oceanic life which was being put in bottles and labeled. Underneath my feet, moving restlessly beneath the very floor of the hotel, was the sea, and my nature which would never amalgamate with analysis in any permanent marriage…It was that day that I realized once more that I was a writer, and only a writer.
“
| — | From The Diary of Anais Nin 1934-1939 by Anais Nin |
I often bought two of everything I liked. I felt the danger of loss. I wanted to be prepared against the loss of a dress I loved which might wear out, the loss of a sandal of a unique design I might never find again. But two bracelets? Duality? Two Loves? One representing the woman who wanted to be enslaved (slave’s bracelet), the other to bind the other, the one I loved? Was I going to wear them together, like twins, or was I going to save one against the possibility of loss, or was I going to give the matching one to someone else? Nothing was insignificant.
“
| — | From The Diary of Anais Nin 1934-1939 by Anais Nin |
