Quotes from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

Anaïs Nin ·  304 pages

Rating: (8.7K votes)


“I hate men who are afraid of women's strength.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“Do not seek the because - in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“There are two ways to reach me: by way of kisses or by way of the imagination. But there is a hierarchy: the kisses alone don't work.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“Sometimes we reveal ourselves when we are least like ourselves.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“I will always be the virgin-prostitute, the perverse angel, the two-faced sinister and saintly woman.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin



“What can I do with my happiness? How can I keep it, conceal it, bury it where I may never lose it? I want to kneel as it falls over me like rain, gather it up with lace and silk, and press it over myself again.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“Everything with me is either worship and passion or pity and understanding. I hate rarely, though when I hate, I hate murderously. For example now, I hate the bank and everything connected with it. I also hate Dutch paintings, penis-sucking, parties, and cold rainy weather. But I am much more preoccupied with loving.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“Last night I wept. I wept because the process by which I have become woman was painful. I wept because I was no longer a child with a child's blind faith. I wept because my eyes were opened to reality....I wept because I could not believe anymore and I love to believe. I can still love passionately without believing. That means I love humanly. I wept because I have lost my pain and I am not yet accustomed to its absence.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“I want to make my own discoveries…….penetrate the evil which attracts me”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“I'm sick of my own romanticism!”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin



“I love her for what she has dared to be, for her hardness, her cruelty, her egoism, her perverseness, her demoniac destructiveness. She would crush me to ashes without hesitation. She is a personality created to the limit. I worship her courage to hurt, and I am willing to be sacrificed to it. She will add the sum of me to her. She will be June plus all that I contain.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“And sometimes I believe your relentless analysis of June leaves something out, which is your feeling for her beyond knowledge, or in spite of knowledge. I often see how you sob over what you destroy, how you want to stop and just worship; and you do stop, and then a moment later you are at it again with a knife, like a surgeon.
What will you do after you have revealed all there is to know about June? Truth. What ferocity in your quest of it. You destroy and you suffer. In some strange way I am not with you, I am against you. We are destined to hold two truths. I love you and I fight you. And you, the same. We will be stronger for it, each of us, stronger with our love and our hate. When you caricature and nail down and tear apart, I hate you. I want to answer you, not with weak or stupid poetry but with a wonder as strong as your reality. I want to fight your surgical knife with all the occult and magical forces of the world.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“The monster I kill every day is the monster of realism. The monster who attacks me every day is destruction. Out of the duel comes the transformation. I turn destruction into creation over and over again.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“His life rushes onward in such torrential rhythm that...only angels and devils can catch the tempo of it.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“Often, though, the passivity of the woman's role weighs on me, suffocates me. Rather than wait for his pleasure, I would like to take it, to run wild. Is it that which pushes me into lesbianism? It terrifies me. Do women act thus? Does June go to Henry when she wants him? Does she mount him? Does she wait for him? He guides my inexperienced hands. It is like a forest fire, to be with him. New places of my body are aroused and burnt. He is incendiary. I leave him in an unquenchable fever.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin



“You are the only woman who ever answered the demands of my imagination.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“This great handsomeness I took into myself later when he desired me, but I took it as one breathes air, or swallows a snowflake, or yields to the sun.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“You are so terribly nimble, so clever. I distrust your cleverness. You make a wonderful pattern, everything is in its place, it looks convincingly clear, too clear. And meanwhile, where are you? Not on the clear surface of your ideas, but you have already sunk deeper, into darker regions, so that one only thinks one has been given all your thoughts, one only imagines you have emptied yourself in that clarity. But there are layers and layers -- you're bottomless, unfathomable. Your clearness is deceptive. You are the thinker who arouses most confusion in me, most doubt, most disturbance.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“I don't hear your words: your voice reverberates against my body like another kind of caress, another kind of penetration. I have no power over your voice. It comes straight from you into me. I could stuff my ears and it would find its way into my blood and make it rise.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“She lacks the core of sureness, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on reflections of herself in others' eyes. She does not dare to be herself.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin



“Then at certain moments I remember one of his words and I suddenly feel the sensual woman flaring up, as if violently caressed. I say the word to myself, with joy. It is at such a moment that my true body lives.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“I want to run out and kiss her fantastic beauty, kiss it and say, "You carry away with you a reflection of me, a part of me. I dreamed you, I wished for your existence. You will always be part of my life. If I love you, it must be because we have shared at some time the same imaginings, the same madness, the same stage.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“He has, like me, a sense of smell. I let him inhale me, then I slip away.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“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.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin



“I have no fear of God, and yet fear keeps me awake at night,fear of the devil. And if I believe in the devil, I must believe in God. And if evil is abhorrent to me, I must be a saint.

Henry, save me from beatification, from the horrors of static perfection. Precipitate me into the inferno.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“Women always think that when they have my shoes, my dress my hairdresser, my make-up, it will work the same way. They do not conceive of the witchcraft that is needed. They do not know that I am not beautiful but that I only appear to be at certain moments.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“If I fall asleep, it is because I am overloaded. I sleep because one hour with Henry contains five years of my life, and one phrase, one caress answers the expectations of a hundred nights. When I hear him laugh, I say, "I have heard Rabelais.". And I swallow his laughter like bread and wine.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“We sit on the kitchen exchanging these diabolical outgrowths of overfertile minds.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin


“Our age has need of violence," he writes. And he is violence.”
― Anaïs Nin, quote from Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin



About the author

Anaïs Nin
Born place: in Neuilly, France
Born date February 21, 1903
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Home. What does it mean to me? Will I ever know home again?”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Smoke


“It's hard not to feel guilty when starving people bring you food.”
― Liesl Shurtliff, quote from Rump: The True Story of Rumpelstiltskin


“She doesn't understand why I'd want to go by the name of some middle aged van driver when I could go by a pretty name like Freda. I told her I like to be economical with syllables.”
― L.H. Cosway, quote from Painted Faces


“It was as if a strand connected that day with this one and the Maker's pleasure was coursing through it like blood in a vein.”
― Andrew Peterson, quote from The Warden and the Wolf King


“I don’t believe you,’ he says. He takes a step towards me, fluster-ing me with his nearness, with his smell, which shouldn’t be so damn familiar after so much time and which shouldn’t still affect me the way it does. ‘I think you still love me,’ he says, ‘even though you don’t want to.’I glare at him, fury battling my instincts. ‘Because that kind of love, Jessa,’ Kit continues, ‘doesn’t just disappear. It doesn’t just fade. I still love you. I’ll always love you. And I think you feel the same way about me. And hell, I know I don’t deserve it. I know all I deserve is your hatred. But if there’s a chance, a single chance that you might still love me, then I’m not going to throw it away. Because I’ve been through hell and you’re the only reason I’m still standing.’ He pauses. ‘So tell me the truth. Do you love him?’I don’t answer. ‘Does he know you like I do? Does he know exactly how you like your eggs in the morning – just a little bit runny?’ he asks. ‘Does he know that you’re allergic to roses? Does he know that when your nostrils flare like that it’s because you’re trying to stop from crying and that when you say “yeah, sure” it usually means “no”?’ He takes a step nearer. ‘Does he make you see stars?’ he asks in a low voice. ‘Does he call you his north star? Because that’s what you are to me. You’re the reason I made it home.’ I squeeze my eyes shut. ‘Does he know exactly where to kiss you?’ Kit mur-murs and startles me by brushing his hand just beneath my ear. ‘Just here?’ My eyes flash open as I suppress a shudder. ‘Does he know exactly how to touch you?’ he asks, his gaze falling to my mouth. ‘Does he tell you that you’re all he thinks about? Does he tell you that he lives for you? That he breathes for you? That he dreams of you every damn moment, awake and asleep? Does he tell you any of that?’ He pauses to look at me and I try to keep a blank face. ‘No, I didn’t think so,’ he says quietly”
― Mila Gray, quote from Come Back to Me


Interesting books

Breathe
(30.9K)
Breathe
by Kristen Ashley
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
(130.8K)
Under the Banner of...
by Jon Krakauer
Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail
(24.7K)
Stolen Lives: Twenty...
by Malika Oufkir
The Friday Night Knitting Club
(66.6K)
The Friday Night Kni...
by Kate Jacobs
The Well of Shades
(5.3K)
The Well of Shades
by Juliet Marillier
Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Vol. 1
(1.8K)
Romance of the Three...
by Luo Guanzhong

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.