Children of the Albatross Quotes

“In art, in history man fights his fears, he wants to live forever, he is afraid of death, he wants to work with other men, he wants to live forever. He is like a child afraid of death. The child is afraid of death, of darkness, of solitude. Such simple fears behind all the elaborate constructions. Such simple fears as hunger for light, warmth, love. Such simple fears behind the elaborate constructions of art. Examine them all gently and quietly through the eyes of a boy. There is always a human being lonely, a human being afraid, a human being lost, a human being confused. Concealing and disguising his dependence, his needs, ashamed to say: I am a simple human being in a too vast and complex world. Because of all we have discovered about a leaf...it is still a leaf. Can we relate to a leaf, on a tree, in a park, a simple leaf: green, glistening, sun-bathed or wet, or turning white because the storm is coming. Like the savage, let us look at the leaf wet or shining with sun, or white with fear of the storm, or silvery in the fog, or listless in too great heat, or falling in autumn, dying, reborn each year anew. Learn from the leaf: simplicity. In spite of all we know about the leaf: its nerve structure phyllome cellular papilla parenchyma stomata venation. Keep a human relation -- leaf, man, woman, child. In tenderness. No matter how immense the world, how elaborate, how contradictory, there is always man, woman, child, and the leaf. Humanity makes everything warm and simple. Humanity...”
― Anaïs Nin, Children of the Albatross

“In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude. But with action came anxiety, and the sense of insuperable effort made to match the dream, and with it came weariness, discouragement, and the flight into solitude again. And then in solitude, in the opium den of remembrance, the possibility of pleasure again. What was she seeking to salvage from the daily current of living, what sudden revulsions drove her back into the solitary cell of the dream?”
― Anaïs Nin, Children of the Albatross

“There was the low-toned and simple voice of the human being Djuna saying: I want love. There was the voice of the artist in Djuna saying: I will create the marvelous. Why should such wishes conflict with each other, or annihilate each other?”
― Anaïs Nin, Children of the Albatross

“But how can I heal myself? I thought one could get healed by just living and loving.”
― Anaïs Nin, Children of the Albatross

“the wound had remained alive, and whenever life touched upon this wound she mistook the pain she felt for being alive.”
― Anaïs Nin, Children of the Albatross

“In art, in history, man fights his fears, he wants to live forever, he is afraid of death, he wants to work with other men, he wants to live forever.”
― Anaïs Nin, Children of the Albatross

“As if the girl of seventeen had remained undestroyed by experience - like some deeper layer in a geological structure which had been pressed but not obliterated by the new layers.”
― Anaïs Nin, Children of the Albatross

“tender fingers touching objects as if all the world were fragile”
― Anaïs Nin, Children of the Albatross

“Or are all dreams made alone?”
― Anaïs Nin, Children of the Albatross

“human beings placed upon an object, or a person this responsibility of being the obstacle, when the obstacle lay within one's self.”
― Anaïs Nin, Children of the Albatross