Anaïs Nin Quotes

Most popular Anaïs Nin Quotes

Adolescence is like cactus. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Adolescence is like cactus.
— Anaïs Nin Seduction of the Minotaur

adolescence

Dreams are necessary to life. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Dreams are necessary to life.
— Anaïs Nin
Jazz is the music of the body. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Jazz is the music of the body.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 5

jazz

Hollywood is a mirage factory. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Hollywood is a mirage factory.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin

Hollywood

What I cannot love, I overlook. - Anaïs Nin quote.
What I cannot love, I overlook.
— Anaïs Nin
People living deeply have no fear of death. - Anaïs Nin quote.
People living deeply have no fear of death.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934–1939

death art of living

The only abnormality is the incapacity to love. - Anaïs Nin quote.
The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.
— Anaïs Nin
When one is pretending the entire body revolts. - Anaïs Nin quote.
When one is pretending the entire body revolts.
— Anaïs Nin Winter of Artifice

pretense be yourself authenticity

Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.
— Anaïs Nin
You live out the confusions until they become clear. - Anaïs Nin quote.
You live out the confusions until they become clear.
— Anaïs Nin
Guilt is the one burden human beings can't bear alone. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Guilt is the one burden human beings can't bear alone.
— Anaïs Nin A Spy in the House of Love

guilt

Compassion for our parents is the true sign of maturity. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Compassion for our parents is the true sign of maturity.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin

compassion maturity

What I cannot love, I overlook.  Is that real friendship? - Anaïs Nin quote.
What I cannot love, I overlook.  Is that real friendship?
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1947–1955

friendship

Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.
— Anaïs Nin Winter of Artifice

music

Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It creates the failures. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It creates the failures.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1944–47

love anxiety

Mature people relate to each other without the need to merge. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Mature people relate to each other without the need to merge.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin

maturity relationships

The potion drunk by lovers is prepared by no one but themselves. - Anaïs Nin quote.
The potion drunk by lovers is prepared by no one but themselves.
— Anaïs Nin The Four-Chambered Heart

lovers

Self-destructive patterns cause as much suffering as outer catastrophes. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Self-destructive patterns cause as much suffering as outer catastrophes.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin

self-destructiveness

I must be a mermaid. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living. - Anaïs Nin quote.
I must be a mermaid. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.
— Anaïs Nin
I stopped loving my father a long time ago.  What remained was the slavery to a pattern. - Anaïs Nin quote.
I stopped loving my father a long time ago.  What remained was the slavery to a pattern.
— Anaïs Nin Under a Glass Bell

personal father

Beware of allowing a tactless word, a rebuttal, a rejection to obliterate the whole sky. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Beware of allowing a tactless word, a rebuttal, a rejection to obliterate the whole sky.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin

tact

Art is the method of levitation, in order to separate one's self from enslavement by the earth. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Art is the method of levitation, in order to separate one's self from enslavement by the earth.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin

art

There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. - Anaïs Nin quote.
There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
— Anaïs Nin

feminism

How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself. - Anaïs Nin quote.
How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.
— Anaïs Nin

men and women

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons.  We cease to grow. - Anaïs Nin quote.
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons.  We cease to grow.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1944–47

religion and politics

I know perfectly well the cynic is a coward. He foresees all barrenness so that barrenness can never surprise him. - Anaïs Nin quote.
I know perfectly well the cynic is a coward. He foresees all barrenness so that barrenness can never surprise him.
— Anaïs Nin The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1923–1927

cynics

I take pleasure in my "transformations." I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me. - Anaïs Nin quote.
I take pleasure in my "transformations." I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.
— Anaïs Nin Linotte, The Early Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1923–1927

transformation

The dream was always running ahead of one. To catch up, to live for a moment in union with it, that was the miracle. - Anaïs Nin quote.
The dream was always running ahead of one. To catch up, to live for a moment in union with it, that was the miracle.
— Anaïs Nin
In every relationship, sooner or later, there is a court scene.  Accusations, counter-accusations, a trial, a verdict. - Anaïs Nin quote.
In every relationship, sooner or later, there is a court scene.  Accusations, counter-accusations, a trial, a verdict.
— Anaïs Nin Collages

relationships

There is an analogy between the bombardment of the atom and the bombardment of the personality by the method of analysis. - Anaïs Nin quote.
There is an analogy between the bombardment of the atom and the bombardment of the personality by the method of analysis.
— Anaïs Nin

psychology

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin

friendship

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the action stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the action stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin

dreams action

Throw your dream into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, or a new country. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Throw your dream into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, or a new country.
— Anaïs Nin

dreams

The self is merely the lens through which we see others and the world, and if this lens is not clear of distortions, we cannot perceive others. - Anaïs Nin quote.
The self is merely the lens through which we see others and the world, and if this lens is not clear of distortions, we cannot perceive others.
— Anaïs Nin The Novel of the Future

the self

You carry a part of my life. If I love you, it must be because we shared, at some moment, the same imaginings, the same madness, the same stage. - Anaïs Nin quote.
You carry a part of my life. If I love you, it must be because we shared, at some moment, the same imaginings, the same madness, the same stage.
— Anaïs Nin
Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction.
— Anaïs Nin

writing

The imagination is far better at inventing tortures than life because the imagination is a demon within us and it knows where to strike, where it hurts. - Anaïs Nin quote.
The imagination is far better at inventing tortures than life because the imagination is a demon within us and it knows where to strike, where it hurts.
— Anaïs Nin Winter of Artifice

imagination

A trite word is an overused word which has lost its identity like an old coat in a second-hand shop.  The familiar grows dull and we no longer see, hear, or taste it. - Anaïs Nin quote.
A trite word is an overused word which has lost its identity like an old coat in a second-hand shop.  The familiar grows dull and we no longer see, hear, or taste it.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin

familiarity words

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through.  Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it.  This is a kind of death. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through.  Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it.  This is a kind of death.
— Anaïs Nin D. H. Lawrence: An Unprofessional Study

life

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person. - Anaïs Nin quote.
There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934–1939

individuality

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.
— Anaïs Nin
There are few human beings who receive the truth complete and staggering, by instant illumination.  Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellular, like a laborious mosaic. - Anaïs Nin quote.
There are few human beings who receive the truth complete and staggering, by instant illumination.  Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellular, like a laborious mosaic.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin

truth

I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live....  I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and re-create myself when destroyed by living. - Anaïs Nin quote.
I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live....  I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and re-create myself when destroyed by living.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin

why I write

To change skins, evolve into new cycles, I feel one has to learn to discard. If one changes internally one should not continue to live with the same objects. They reflect one's mind and psyche of yesterday. I throw away what has no dynamic, living use. - Anaïs Nin quote.
To change skins, evolve into new cycles, I feel one has to learn to discard. If one changes internally one should not continue to live with the same objects. They reflect one's mind and psyche of yesterday. I throw away what has no dynamic, living use.
— Anaïs Nin

change

Electric flesh arrows, a second wave of pleasure falls over the first, a third which touches every nerve end, and now the third like an electric current traversing the body.  A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids.  A foam of music falls over the ears.  It is the gong of the orgasm. - Anaïs Nin quote.
Electric flesh arrows, a second wave of pleasure falls over the first, a third which touches every nerve end, and now the third like an electric current traversing the body.  A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids.  A foam of music falls over the ears.  It is the gong of the orgasm.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1934–1939

orgasms

Writers do not live one life, they live two.  There is the living and then there is the writing.  There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction.
— Anaïs Nin The Diary of Anaïs Nin: 1931–1934

writers

Love never dies a natural death.  It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source, it dies of blindness and errors and betrayals.  It dies of illnesses and wounds, it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings, but never a natural death.  Every lover should be brought to trial as the murderer of his own love.
— Anaïs Nin The Four-Chambered Heart

love