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George Orwell
DIARIES

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MADLY, DEEPLY

The Diaries of Alan Rickman

Alan Rickman -

Photo by David Harrison

ANAÏS NIN

Henry and June: A Journal of Love

The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin (1931–1932)

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The monster I kill every day is the monster of realism. The monster who attacks me every day is destruction. Out of the duel comes the transformation. I turn destruction into creation over and over again.

ANAÏS NIN
The Early Diaries, Vol 2 (1920-1923)

I prefer by far the warmth and softness to mere brilliancy and coldness. Some people remind me of sharp dazzling diamonds. Valuable but lifeless and loveless. Others, of the simplest field flowers, with hearts full of dew and with all the tints of celestial beauty reflected in their modest petals.

ANAÏS NIN

The Diaries of Anaïs Nin, Vol 2 (1934-1939)

Man today is like a tree that is withering at the roots. And most women painted and wrote nothing but imitations of phalluses. The world was filled with phalluses, like totem poles, and no womb anywhere. 

I must go the opposite way from Proust who found eternal moments in creation. I must find them in life. My work must be the closest to the life flow. I must install myself inside of the seed, growth, mysteries. I must prove the possibility of instantaneous, immediate, spontaneous art. My art must be like a miracle. Before it goes through the conduits of the brain and becomes an abstraction, a fiction, a lie. 

It must be for woman, more like a personified ancient ritual, where every spiritual thought was made visible, enacted, represented.

ANAÏS NIN

The Diaries, Volume 1 (1931-1934)

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.