Man can never know the
loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in the woman's womb
only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this
fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his
work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy.
The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy,
completion. Woman may be busy too, but she feels empty.
Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which
she is bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with
another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each
act of love a taking of man within her, an act of birth and
rebirth, of child rearing and man bearing. Man lies in her
womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to
be. But for woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the
moment man rests inside of her.
— Anaïs Nin,
The Diary of
Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934