"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Life is a process of becoming, a combina… - Anaïs Nin

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity, & stumble from defeat to defeat.

And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.

The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

I am the one who has felt most deeply the stuttering of the tongue in its relation to thought.

Many couples, many people, are not living with real human beings, but with their ghosts. Who has not followed for years the spell of a particular tone of voice, from voice to voice, as the fetishist follows a beautiful foot, scarcely seeing the woman herself? A voice, a mouth, an eye, all stemming from the original fountain of our first desire, directing it, enslaving us, until we choose to unravel the fatal web and free ourselves.

During the nuit blanche I think: Henry, my love, I can love you better now that you cannot hurt me. I can love you more gaily. More loosely. I can endure space and distance and betrayals. Only the best, the best and the strongest. Henry, my love, the wanderer, the artist, the faithless one who has loved me so well. Believe me, nothing has changed in me toward you except my courage. I cannot walk with one love ever. My head is strong, my head, but to walk, to walk into love I need miracles, the miracles of excess, and white heat, and two-ness! Lie here, breathing into my hair, over my neck. No hurt will come from me. No criticalness, no judgment. I bear you in my womb.