Anais Nin Quotes

The basis of insincerity is the idealized image we hold of ourselves and wish to impose on others.

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.

To think of him in the middle of the day lifts me out of ordinary living.

The shell is America's most active contribution to the formation of character. A tough hide. Grow it early.

Either one fails in one's art or in one's life.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage "People living deeply have no fear of death.

The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body.

I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension

Paris-New York, the two high tension magnetic poles between life, life of the senses, of the spirit in Paris, and life in action in New York.

Warmth, perfume, rugs, soft lights, books. They do not appease me. I am aware of time passing, of all the world contains that I have not seen, of all the interesting people I have not met.

I cannot concentrate all my friendship on any single one of my friends because no one is complete enough in himself.

Poetry is the alchemy which teaches us to convert ordinary materials into gold.

Nowhere is inhumanity more revealed than in hospitals.

The unconscious can become destructive if it is disregarded and thwarted.

New York seems conducted by jazz, animated by it. It is essentially a city of rhythm.

Secrets. Need to disguise. The novel was born of this.

jazz is the expression of America's romantic self, its sensual potency, its lyrical force.

Idealism is the death of the body and the imagination. All but freedom, utter freedom, is death

I prefer empty cages, Sabina, until I find a unique bird I once saw in my dreams.

We see things the way we are, not the way they are.

Stations and airports are rehearsals for separations by death.

We cannot cure the evils of politics with politics.

We are beginning to see the influence of dream upon reality and reality upon dream.

the cynic is a coward. He foresees all barrenness so that barrenness can never surprise him.

Perfection is static, And I am in full progress.

I needed to live, but I also needed to record what I lived.

It is easy to love and there are so many ways to do it.

The personal, if it is deep enough, becomes universal, mythical, symbolic.

Solitude may rust your words.

Through love, through friendship, a heart lives more than one life.

Is devotion to others a cover for the hungers and the needs of the self, of which one is ashamed? I was always ashamed to take. So I gave. It was not virtue. It was a disguise.

The core of creation is to summon an image and the power to work with the image.

Creation which cannot express itself becomes madness.

Everything with me is either worship and passion or pity and understanding. I hate rarely, though when I hate. I hate murderously.

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.

I can’t let you go now. I want to go places with you; obscure little places, just to be able to say: here I came with her.

... and the very folds of the curtains contained secrets and sighs.

At sixteen, Sabina took moon baths, first of all, because everyone else took sun baths, and second, she admitted, because she had been told it was dangerous.

It is difficult to live with the pure. They do not condemn you; they forgive you. This forgiveness is more terrible than a judgment.

Since desire always goes towards that which is our direct opposite, it forces us to love that which will make us suffer.

The one who travels like a lover searching for a new passion is suddenly blessed with new eyes, new ears, new senses.

... only love begets love.

Our love of each other was like two long shadows kissing without hope of reality.

destruction is ultimately self-destruction.

Asia discovered two remedies for the cruelty of man, art and religion. America discarded both and is drowning in hate and aggressivity.

Beware of allowing a tactless word, a rebuttal, a rejection to obliterate the whole sky

Only when the poet and the scientist work in unison will we have living experiences and knowledge of the marvels of the universe as they are being discovered.

Memory is a great betrayer.

Sexual intercourse... a joyous, joyous, joyous, joyous impaling of woman on man's sensual mast.

There is no denying that we are suffering from a collective neurosis and the novel which does not face this is not a novel of our time.