Anaïs Nin, A Spy in the House of Love

"Later he´ll be drunk in extremis and will only be able to speak the esperanto of alcoholics, which is a language full of stutterings from the geological layers of our animal ancestors"

"Innocence was gone from all our acts. Our habitual state of rebellion became a serious political crime."

"You haven't loved yet," he said. "You've only been trying to love; beginning to love. Trust alone is not love, illusion is not love, desire alone is not love. All these were paths leading you out of yourself, it is true, and so you thought they led to another, but you never reached the other. You were only on the way."

"At night too, she puzzled the mystery of her desperate need of kindness. As other girls prayed for handsomeness in a lover, or for wealth, or for power, or for poetry, she had prayed fervently: let him be kind."

"We are more severe judges of our own acts... We judge our thoughts, our intents, our secret curses, our secret hates, not only our acts."