Best Of Anaïs Nin's "Henry and June"

Here is a selection of memorable quotes from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love" -The Unexpurgated Diary of Anais Nin (1931-1932).

Painting above: Portrait of Marguerite Kelsey (c.1928) by Meredith Frampton

The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. 
I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself.
p.1

I really believe that if I were not a writer, not a creator, not an experimenter, I might have been a very faithful wife. I think highly of faithfulness. But my temperament belongs to the  writer, not to the woman. Such a separation may seem childish, but it is possible. Subtract the overintensity, the sizzling of ideas, and you get a woman who loves perfection. And faithfulness is one of the perfections. It seems stupid and unintelligent to me now because I have bigger plans in mind. Perfection is status, and I am in full progress. The faithful wife is only one phase, one moment, one metamorphosis, one condition.
p.12

Hugo and I yield entirely to each other. We cannot be without each other, we cannot endure discord, war, estrangement, we cannot take walks alone, we do not like to travel without each other. We have yielded in spite of our individualism, our hatred of intimacy. We have absorbed our egocentric selves into our love. Our love is our ego.
p.27

Is how one is loved always so important? Is it so imperative that one should be loved absolutely or greatly? Would Fred say of me that I can love because I love others more than I love myself? Or is it Hugo who loves when he goes three times to the station to meet me because I have missed three trains? Or is it Fred, with his nebulous, poetic, delicate comprehension? Or do I love most when I say to Henry, “The destroyers do not always destroy. June has not destroyed you, ultimately. The core of you is a writer. And the writer is living.”
p.99


This is the fifth instalment in a special 'Best Of' series on the yak occidental, focusing on the diaries of Anaïs Nin. 

Overview and Volume 1 can be found here.

Volume 2 can be found here.

Volume 3 can be found here.

Volume 4 can be found here.

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