things
Oh, domesticity! The wonder of dinner plates and cream pitchers. You know your friends by their ornaments. You want everything. If Mrs. A has her mama’s old jelly mold, you want one, too, and everything that goes with it—the family, the tradition, the years of having jelly molded in it. We domestic sensualists live in a state of longing, no matter how comfortable our own places are.
“The Lone Pilgrim,” in The Lone Pilgrim (New York: Perennial Library, 2001), 6.
The abstract beauty of Japanese art issues from the abstract beauty of their lives. They do not like clutter. They like to look at one flower at a time, one painting, one pot. They have a storage house for the objects of art which are not being displayed.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol 7, 1966–1974) (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 22.