Quotes from Anais Nin

He deseado poseerla como si un hombre fuera, pero he querido también que me amara con los ojos, con las manos, con los sentidos que sólo poseen las mujeres. Es una penetración suave y sutil.

La vida se encoge o se expande en proporción al coraje que uno tenga.

The whole world is based on fear, even behind the jealousy of the day before lay dear. Fear of being alone, fear of being abandoned, fear of life, fear of being trapped in tragedy, fear of the animal in us, fear of one's hatred, of committing a crime, fear of cancer, of syphilis, of starvation.

You may have found [Alain Fournier's]Le Grand Meaulnes a little pale perhaps. (I spell "god" with a small "g" because I do not believe in him, but I love to swear by him, which shows what a Christian fear of sacrilege I have.)

Whenever she felt lost in the endless deserts of insomnia she would take up the labyrinthian thread of her life again from the beginning to see if she could find at what moment the paths had become confused.

La amo por lo que se ha atrevido a ser, por su dureza, su crueldad, su egoísmo, su perversidad, su demoníaca fuerza destructora. Me aplastaría sin la menor vacilación. Se trata de una personalidad llevada al límite. Adoro el valor con que hiere y estoy dispuesta a sacrificarme a él. Sumará mi ser al suyo. Será June más todo lo que yo contengo.

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, intuition, emotion, and instinct, the sooner his work will be integrated.

He overlooks the voluptuousness of half-knowledge, half-possession, of leaning over the edge dangerously, for no specific climax.

Psychoanalysis

I want to give you an idea. . . . "Ask some rector for a copy of the Apocrypha". . .. "Read Rabelais in old French." "Reread Cervantes" .

Make the Last Book the first of a series—a life job, like Proust's.

Sentimentalismo? ¿Romanticismo? Si habla en serio... ¿Por qué dudo de ella? Acaso sea que es muy sensible y la gente hipersensible es falsa cuando los demás dudan de ellos? vacilan. Y dan la impresión de ser insinceros.

I hate rarely, though when I hate, I hate murderously. For example now, I hate the bank and everything connected with it. I also hate Dutch paintings, penis-sucking, parties, and cold rainy weather. But I am more preoccupied with loving.

Yo estoy rebosante de amor hacia ella. Y al mismo tiempo siento que me estoy muriendo. Nuestro amor sería la muerte. El abrazo de las imaginaciones.

I have a mind which is bigger than all the rest of me, an inexorable conscience.

Las dos hemos perdido la cabeza –le dije–, pero a veces cuando más cosas revelamos de nosotros mismos menos somos nosotros mismos. Yo ya no intento pensar. Cuando estoy contigo me es imposible. Tú eres como yo, esperando que se presente el momento perfecto, aunque nada de lo que se ha imaginado durante demasiado tiempo puede llegar a ser perfecto en un sentido terrenal.

Remind me to show you something on "Decadence" from Havelock Ellis' Introduction to [J. K. Huysmans']Against the Grain. You will like it.

To retreat is not feminine, male, or trickery. It is a terror before utter destruction.

Both of us had one inviolate self we never gave. It was our dreaming self. Now we have invaded this world in each other. She is too rich to be fully known in a few days. She says I am too rich for her. […] Her idealism is so demanding. It awes me. With her I feel timelessness.

happiness is something from which fever is absent.

I have no longer the strength to act what I do not feel.

Now Geroge had a weakness in common with many men; when he was in an expansive mood, he loved to recount his exploits.

Men think they live and die for ideas. What a divine joke. They live and die for emotional, personal errors, just as women do.

Hugo y yo nos entregamos totalmente el uno al otro. No podemos estar el uno sin el otro, no soportamos la discordia, la guerra, el alejamiento, no podemos dar paseos solos, no nos gusta viajar sin el otro. Nos hemos entregado a pesar de nuestro individualismo, de nuestra aversión a la intimidad. Nuestro amor ha absorbido nuestro egocentrismo. Nuestro amor es nuestro ego.