Anaïs Nin

Quotes

• “We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow pa...”
• “There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another w...”
• “When your beauty struck me, it dissolved me. Deep down, I am not different from you. I dreamed you, I wished for your ex...”
• “One discovers that destiny can be diverted, that one does not have to remain in bondage to the first wax imprint made on...”
• “I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my...”
• “The man who was once starved may revenge himself upon the world not by stealing just once, or by stealing only what he n...”
• “Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and err...”
• “We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reali...”
• “I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don't know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. ...”
• “For too many centuries women have been being muses to artists. I wanted to be the muse, I wanted to be the wife of the a...”
• “Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to ele...”
• “She lacks confidence, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. S...”
• “If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because o...”
• “I am only responsible for my own heart, you offered yours up for the smashing my darling. Only a fool would give out suc...”
• “I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don’t know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness.”
• “How wrong is it for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself?”
• “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
• “The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.”
• “All those who try to unveil the mysteries always have tragic lives. At the end they are always punished.”
• “The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison, was the miracle.”
• “life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity, & stumble from defeat to defeat.”
• “I reserve the right to love many different people at once, and to change my prince often.”
• “I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.”
• “The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say.”
• “I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.”
• “This diary is my kief, hashish and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice.”
• “The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.”
• “Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are.”
• “We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
• “Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.”
• “Living never wore one so much as the effort not to live.”
• “We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
• “Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.”
• “Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.”
• “People living deeply have no fear of death.”
• “What I cannot love, I overlook.”
• “Dreams are necessary to life.”