I write as I breathe, naturally, flowingly, spontaneously, out of an overflow, not as a substitute for life. I am more interested in human beings than in writing, more interested in lovemaking than in writing, more interested in living than in writing. More interested in becoming a work of art than in creating one. I am more interesting than what I write. I am gifted in relationship above all things. I have no confidence in myself and great confidence in others. I need love more than food. I stumble and make errors, and often want to die. When I look most transparent is probably when I have just come out of the fire. I walk into the fire always, and come out more alive. ~ Anaïs Nin, Letter to Leo Lerman, December 1946

Human beings do not grow in perfect symmetry. They oscillate, expand, contract, back track, arrest themselves, retrogress, mobilize, atrophy in part, proceed erratically according to experience and traumas. Some aspects of the personality mature, others do not. Some live in the past, some in the present. Some people are futuristic characters, some are cubistic, some are hard-edged, some geometric, some abstract, some impressionistic, some surrealistic! Some of their insights remain relative, and we can no longer think of a character as good or bad, but a combination of characteristics which vary according to relationship and the point in time. We know now that we are composites in reality, collages of our fathers and mothers, of what we read, of television influences and films, of friends and associates, and we know we often play roles quite removed from our genuine selves. ~ Anaïs Nin, The Novel of the Future