A text by Anaïs Nin, from the first volume of her *Diaries* (1966), covering the years 1931-1934:
“We live life as we dream it, in one form or another. What strikes me is not this. It is the strength, the ferocity, the insistence with which most people give up their dreams, almost immediately. By the age of twenty, they already have an established, blocked, resigned profession, character, lifestyle. Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. Fear makes it shrink. And I hate what is small, restricted, resigned. I rebel against greyness, pettiness, immobility. I want flow, danger, adventure, transformation, revolt.”