The Diary of Anais Nin Volume 1 1931-1934

by Anaïs Nin

There are times when he is still asleep in some unknown hotel with an unknown woman when he should be at his office, and other times when he is working late at his office, while his friends are waiting for him at the Café du Dôme.

You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.

“the truly faithless one is the one who makes love to only a fraction of you. And denies the rest.”

Henry will stay on at a party until the very dregs show. I tend to leave it before it becomes ugly. He wants to touch bottom. I want to preserve my illusion.