+ witch of words +

"Am I writing for the world? No. My language is unknown. What a joy it will be if I am overlooked; my treasures will then belong to me alone. When I die I will burn these pages and my thoughts scribbled here will live only in eternity with the one who expressed them."

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"For an hour you were me, that is the other half of yourself. What you broke, burnt, and tore is still in my hands. I am the keeper of fragile things and I have kept of you what is indissoluble."

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"December 29, 1927 - And yet whenever women find an emptiness in their lives they don’t seek the cause of it within themselves, in their spiritual and intellectual life; no; they seek a man, they turn destructively upon the husband as if he were to blame, upon the children. They turn to mere physical sensation, to base deception---I can’t understand. . . I realize that I am now doing nothing but fulfilling dreams, nothing but materializing images, using my will to make all my desires tangible. Of course, I never dreamed all that I am doing. When I was younger I imagined my dancing, my writing and marriage, though not quite like the real one, which surpasses the conceptions of a child. My imagination has been my lamp. I have only to desire wisely and intensely, and with my will, to fulfill. Is this an illusion, a conceit of my will’s power, so newly discovered that perhaps it has intoxicated me? It is so new for me to have an active will after years of merely imaginary activity. Even last year, walking down Montparnesse, I asked myself what could happen if suddenly I said and did exactly what I wanted to say and do. I foresaw cataclysms. Yet I tried it. And the result? Nobody hurt---a few scandalized; more, pleased and proud; even more, influenced and enlivened by my activity. Every day I feel surer of myself, my desires soar higher. I feel power in myself, conviction. If it is conceit, a vast empty bubble of vanity, an illusion as false as my old modesty was false; if I am deceived intellectually, by the fireworks of my life, if its ascension is the ascension of self-glory; if there is no spiritual value and philosophical significance to my life, then there is no truth and no sincerity in this world, because no woman ever looked down into herself with as much cold criticism, no woman ever analyzed her ideas and actions more carefully, none was ever more doubtful of herself, more self-deprecating, more fearful of hypocrisy, more terrified of lies, more eager for truth, than I. You, my Journal, alone, know that."