The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934–1939

Human is evil. Being jealous, indiscreet, possessive, lazy and dependent, exploiting others, that is human. Having compassion and understanding, patience and helping others, all of which is considered human, is ideological goodness.

“What I like best about myself,” she writes, “is my audacity, my courage. The ways I have found to be true to myself without causing too much pain or damage. . . . What I hate so much is my vanity, my need to shine, my need of applause and my sentimentality. I would like to be harder. I cannot make a joke, make fun of anyone, without feeling regrets.”

I never reacted naturally according to my emotions. Of course, it was self-protection, which I rationalized as human: not to hurt others. Cruelty, cheapness, meanness, that is human.

He began to control the flow of his patients, to give more time to the theatre, to book-collecting, to his own writing.

He had become aware that he had not lived enough. He was rebelling against the pattern of his life, against all the giving, the annihilation, the immolation of a doctor’s life.

He insists psychologists know little about woman. “Because she has not created enough, she is not articulate, she imitates man.” So he insists that when he is dictating a lecture I should make my own comments on the margin, in red ink. “That way we will hear both sides of the story.

concentrate on this new art, the art of exploring human beings at a deeper level, archeology of the soul

Curtains rise on plays far deeper and more terrifying than any play or film. Behind the great powers, tragedy, frustration, fears, bitterness. Death by suicide, death by psychological murder

Perhaps because the life of New York was so intensely active, events seemed accelerated and the atmosphere changed from day to day, but the temperament of Rank’s dynamic analysis also seemed to accelerate his patients.

I have built a private world, but I fear I cannot help build the world outside