Nin Quotes

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.

I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing.

A big enough artist, I say, can eat anything, must eat everything and then alchemize it. Only the feeble writer is afraid of expansion.

We did not touch each other. We were both leaning over the abyss.

All those who try to unveil the mysteries always have tragic lives. At the end they are always punished.

He was now in that state of fire that she loved. She wanted to be burnt.

I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.

I see enormous loves growing immense and finally crushing me.

He was jealous of her future, and she of his past.

This great handsomeness I took into myself later when he desired me, but I took it as one breathes air, or swallows a snowflake, or yields to the sun.

I hate rarely, though when I hate, I hate murderously.

They courted the face on the screen, the face of translucence, the face of wax on which men found it possible to imprint the image of their fantasy.

That we cannot rise equal to situations when we are in them — that is the tragedy of life.

There is a resemblance between men and women, not a contrast. When a man begins to recognize his feeling, the two unite. When men accept the sensitive side of themselves, they come alive.

We speak of the masculine and the feminine, but they are the wrong labels. It is really more a matter of poetry versus intellectualization.

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.