Anais Nin covers a variety of topics in this diary entry:
- she seeks permissions from Edmund Wilson and Gore Vidal for her portraits of them
- she states in a letter that she is now a political activist, though she didn't used to be
- she reads a script of Hermann Hesse's Steppenwolf
- she speaks of the "Christmas neurosis" - we want it to be magic, but it's false - people you haven't heard from all year suddenly send you a Christmas card
- some handicaps and pressures come from ourselves; examine this before we blame others for the traps in which we find ourselves
- "liberation is a state of mind, of being. It has to be achieved from within, and then it becomes an influence, it radiates outwardly, it achieves its energy and its aims creatively."
- she works 7:00 a.m. until midnight to keep up with letters and lectures and lists 25 places she has either lectured at or been invited to lecture
- "most women have felt what I have felt, but not all have actually been able to articulate it. The hardest things to write about are your emotions and intuitions."
- "very often, we fall into traps we set for ourselves, blaming our situation for our failure to act. We must become self-aware and self-honest so that we can deal with ourselves."
- she doesn't regret not having children. "I've created books, been a mother to people I have known, such as my students. I certainly don't think that every woman should have children, nor that women who aren't mothers are 'unfeminine.' Women shouldn't have to feel obligated to fulfill some obsolete definition of what a woman should be."
- "I put my energy in therapy as others do in religion or philosophy."
- she has coffee, toast, and eggs for breakfast
- she realizes she is helping women flower
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