Status Updates From The Early Diary of Anaïs Ni...

“I talked about the love of art. ‘It seems to make you stand apart, does it not?’ I asked. ‘Yes, and yet, strangely enough, in our love of art we are trying to draw nearer to life.’”

“I fear my trust in friendship will not pass its severest test. Oh, the sadness of uncertainty—and about people I seem to know so little, so terribly little. When will I be able to discern, to judge, to place my trust in trustworthy hands. I am always giving myself away in some strange way. People know all that is in my heart; they read my face, my eyes. I can hold no secret like and dislikes.”

“Thoughts cannot be controlled like actions, and there are moments when mine turn naturally and inevitably to the persons I long to have near me.”

“Rain wakes many memories, many smoldering sentiments, many strange thoughts.”

“There is poetry in every human being but it lies hidden sometimes because the person is ashamed of it and believes it to be a weakness.”

“Perhaps it is mere illusion I have about my love—that is it comes to me, it should be vastly different from all loves, great and strange, undescribably pure, magnificent, indestructible. It should be blended also with my treasured Books and my worship of Nature. Can anything be greater than such a perfect union—of things that endure forever and of which no one could ever tire?”

“I do not believe in hell at all, however, and still less in hell on this earth of ours. I do believe in something vastly different; that we expiate our faults on earth, by sacrifice and suffering; that we atone for our great weakness every day.”

“Beware, poor boy, the queer thoughts of a queer girl are bottomless but very elastic, and they have a way of springing unexpectedly upon some people.”

“Do you understand why the very word Book is sacred to me? It is always a long, complete voyage followed by the discovery of some new world. Each time, if a book is good, all my mind responds to it. I think, I feel, I laugh and cry with it. They are nearly always, fine old books, those books I read. Have they not made me the old-fashioned girl I am?”

“The happiest moment of the day was, nevertheless, during that short walk between the station and home, when I felt ecstatic because there were stars twinkling above me, because the field smelled in the way of fields in winter, because it was so still, so cold, so friendly and soothing; because I was alone.”

“Indeed, most of my questions I can never express. They simply lie in my heart and stir and shift until my restlessness finds relief in tears or, sometimes, in happiness, such as I experience in my walks through the woods but never among people.”

“There are few things I notice as quickly and feel as keenly as being not wanted, and it is enough to make me fly to the end of the world.”

“I have lived again all the sorrows of other people’s souls. I have not seen as others saw, or drawn my sorrows from the same sources, and I know the great, great loneliness of thoughts and dreams. Even when I sit thus, like tonight, while others sleep so calmly, I think and dream strange things all alone, all alone.”

“Thus, through my illness, I was blessed with Father and Mother’s quiet, united love. And now that this great love that helped me to bear so much is gone from my life, I like to think of it as a perfect dream beyond my reach.”

“When does a life begin? Is it at the time one opens one’s eyes to the light of the world? Somehow I believe it begins long before that…”

“If there is anything in the world that makes me doubt God, it is money…
What bitterness there is in the words ‘earning your living,’ and what cruelty. As if a living were worth earning if your earning kills your very soul midway! Rebellion, a fierce, burning, passionate rebellion, that is all I feel tonight.”

“I feel the great loneliness in my heart again. I feel friendliness, companionless. Wherever I turn for sunshine there is a cloud in between, a heavy, dark and lasting cloud.”

“I love life, only life does not love me. It wants to disenchant me, but my dreams and I will never part.”

“Were I to be made into a pie, I know that at the time to be eaten, blackbirds would fly out of me, and bluebirds, and catbirds, and doves, all confused in their personalities and species, because my mind is indeed a sad state of contradictions and ecstasies and doubts.”

“Had I been a man, I would have been an eternal lover. Being a woman, what am I? The future will tell. Only, I am in love, because my heart is awake to every vibration, to every touch of nature and humanity. I feel, always, from day to day, sorrow and joy. I live and dream love.”

“Not a thought in my head is really settled. I seem full of contradictions and doubts. I wonder how people acquire that precious serenity and firmness of decision which I have noticed in them with unbounded admiration.”

“Someday I will have all the books I had seen, in my library, which is to reach the ceiling and completely surround me. Beloved prison.”

“It makes me think that what I like in trees I like in people too, because 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 simplest field flowers, with hearts full of dew and with all the tints of celestial beauty reflected in their modest petals.”

“I have heaps of friendly thoughts in my head, and an immense quantity of hope, of illusions. When these things leave me, I prefer to die, and until then I will live with all my heart this glorious life, which is a strange mixture of monotonous tasks and delicious emotions, sprinkled now and then with little incidents out of the ordinary, and the realization of some sweet, tender daydream.”