“I love your silences, they are like mine. You are the only being before whom I am not distressed by my own silences. You have a vehement silence, one feels it is charged with essences, it is a strangely alive silence, like a trap open over a well, from which one can hear the secret murmur of the earth itself.”
― Under a Glass Bell
― Under a Glass Bell
“Some people read to confirm their own hopelessness. Others read to be rescued from it.”
― In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays
― In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays
“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”
― The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
― The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
“He was jealous of her future, and she of his past.”
― Delta of Venus
― Delta of Venus
“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.”
― House of Incest
― House of Incest
Cortney’s 2025 Year in Books
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