

“I am the most tired woman in the world. I am tired when I get up. Life requires an effort I cannot make. Please give me that heavy book. I need to put something heavy like that on top of my head. I have to place my feet under the pillows always, so as to be able to stay on earth. Otherwise I feel myself going away, going away at a tremendous speed, on account of my lightness. I know that I am dead. As soon as I utter a phrase my sincerity dies, becomes a lie whose coldness chills me. 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.”
―
―

“When someone suffocates you with what they believe is love, even as you feel your air supply being cut off, you at least feel embraced.”
― Animal
― Animal

“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.”
― Incest: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1932-1934
― Incest: From "A Journal of Love": The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1932-1934

“The men noticed I'd stopped playing. Men are never okay when you stop. I had a fear of angering a man. Of not being amenable woman. I had the fear of being murdered. To assuage the guilt that I didn't follow up the flirtation by fucking them, I gave the movers each a tip of fifty dollars.”
― Animal
― Animal

“Man can never know the loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in the woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. Woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which she is bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love a taking of man within her, an act of birth and rebirth, of child rearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to be. But for woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment man rests inside of her.”
― The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
― The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
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