Henry and June Quotes

“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.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“Since that talk with Henry, when I admitted more than I had ever admitted to myself, my life has altered and become deformed. The restlessness which was vague and nameless has become intolerably clear. Here is where it stabs me, at the center of the most perfect, the most steadfast structure, marriage. When this shakes, then my whole life crumbles. My love for Hugo has become fraternal. I look almost with horror at this change, which is not sudden, but slow in appearing on the surface. I had closed my eyes to all the signs. Above all, I dreaded admitting that I didn't want Hugo's passion. I had counted on the ease with which I would distribute my body. But it is not true. It was never true. When I rushed towards Henry, it was all Henry. I am frightened because I have realized the full extent of my imprisonment. Hugo has sequestered me, fostered my love of solitude. I regret now all those years when he gave me nothing but his love and I turned into myself for the rest. Starved, dangerous years.
I should break up my whole life, and I cannot do it. My life is not as important as Hugo's, and Henry doesn't need me because he has June. But whatever in me has grown outside and beyond Hugo will go on.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“Hugo has been infinitely tender with me, but while he talks of June I think of our hands locked together. She does not reach the same sexual center of my being that man reaches; she does not touch that. What, then, has she moved in me? I have wanted to possess her as if I were a man, but I have also wanted her to love me with the eyes, the hands, the senses that only women have. It is a soft and subtle penetration.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“That last afternoon in Henry's hotel room was for me like a white-hot furnace. Before, I had only white heat of the mind and of the imagination; now it is of the blood. Sacred completeness. I come out dazed in the mellow spring evening and I think, now I would not mind dying.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“You cannot do any more for me," I said. "Since I have begun to depend on you I feel weaker than ever before. I have disappointed you by acting neurotically at the very moment when I should have shown the wisdom of your guidance. I don't want to ever come back to you. I feel that I must go and work and live and forget about all this.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“I would like to be naked and cover myself with cold crystal jewelry. Jewelery and perfume...”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“I gave away my mystery, knowing I shouldn't, yet incapable of anything else.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“What does it mean that you have not written me?... Am I a dream to you, am I not real and warm for you? What new loves, new ecstasies, new impulses move you now?”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“I cross the street and walk into the Printemps. I go to the counter with necklaces and bracelets and earrings, which dazzle me always. I stand like a fascinated savage. Glitter. Amethyst. Turquoise. Shell pink. Irish green. I would like to be naked and cover myself in cold crystal jewelry. Jewelry and perfume.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“I wept because from now on I will weep less. I wept because I have lost my pain and I am not yet accustomed to its absence.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“One does not learn to suffer less but to dodge pain.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“I gave him the one thing June cannot give him: honesty. I am so ready to admit what a supremely developed ego would not admit: that June is a terrifying and inspiring character who makes every other woman insipid, that I would live her life except for my compassion and my conscience, that she may destroy Henry the man, but Henry the writer is more enriched by ordeals than by peace.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“Do you have regrets that we were so overwhelmed? Do you ever wish to live those hours over again and differently, with more confidence.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“I am not always just living, just following all my fantasies; I come up for air, for understanding.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“He has made me lucid and sane, and I am suffering cruelly from the loss of my imaginary life.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“All through the dream there was a sense of great disorder, of movements which accomplished nothing, of everything being late, of everybody waiting, restless and defeated.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love," The Unexpurgated Diary (1931–1932) 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, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“Her beauty drowned me. As I sat in front of her I felt that I would do anything mad for her, anything she asked of me. Henry faded. She was color, brilliance, strangeness.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love," The Unexpurgated Diary (1931–1932) of Anaïs Nin

“When Henry telephones, I feel his voice in my veins. I want him to talk into me. I eat Henry, I breathe Henry, Henry is the sun. My cape is his arm around my waist.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“As he sits there, I feel that I can see his mind as I see his body, and it is labyrinthine, fertile, sentient. I am loaded with adoration for everything that his head contains and for the impulses which blow in gusts.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“Quiero llevar a cabo mis propios descubrimientos. No necesito drogas ni estimulantes artificiales. Sin embargo quiero experimentar esas mismas cosas con June, penetrar en la maldad que me atrae. Busco la vida, y las experiencias que deseo; se me niegan porque tengo en mí una fuerza que las neutraliza. Conozco a June, la seudoprostituta, y se vuelve pura.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

“Hay dos modos de llegar a mí, mediante los besos o la imaginación. Pero existe una jerarquía; los besos por sí solos no bastan.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

“Una vida de liberación de los instintos se compone de diferentes estratos. El primero conduce al segundo, el segundo al tercero y así sucesivamente. Al final, se llega a los placeres anormales.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June

“Seeing Eduardo yesterday crystallized my mental chill. I listen to his explanation of my feelings. It sounds very plausible. I have suddenly turned cold towards Henry because I witnessed his cruelty to Fred. Cruelty has been the great conflict in my life. I witnessed cruelty in my childhood -- Father's cruelty towards Mother and his sadistic punishment of my brothers and me -- and the sympathy I felt for my mother reached hysteria when she and my father quarreled, acts which paralyzed me later. I grew up with such an incapacity for cruelty it amounts to a weakness.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“gave him the one thing June cannot give him: honesty. I am so ready to admit what a supremely developed ego would not admit: that June is a terrifying and inspiring character who makes every other woman insipid, that I would live her life except for my compassion and my conscience, that she may destroy Henry the man, but Henry the writer is more enriched by ordeals than by peace.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love," The Unexpurgated Diary (1931–1932) of Anaïs Nin

“Her beauty drowned me. As I sat in front of her I felt that I would do anything mad for her, anything she asked of me.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love," The Unexpurgated Diary (1931–1932) of Anaïs Nin

“Am I hypnotized, fascinated by evil because I have none in me? Or is there in me the greatest evil?”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932

“Perfidious, infinitely desirable, drawing me to her as towards death.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love," The Unexpurgated Diary (1931–1932) of Anaïs Nin

“Perfection is static, and I am in full progress. The faithful wife is only one phase, one moment, one metamorphosis, one condition.”
― Anaïs Nin, Henry and June: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931-1932