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Anaïs Nin
101 quotes
“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 (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: D. H. Lawrence : An Unprofessional Study (1932); also quoted in The Mirror and the Garden : Realism and Reality in the Writings of Anais Nin (1971) by Evelyn J. Hinz, p. 40
“The morning I got up to begin this book I coughed. Something was coming out of my throat: it was strangling me. I broke the thread which held it and yanked it out. I went back to bed and said: I have just spat out my heart.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: House of Incest (1936)
“My first vision of earth was water veiled. I am of the race of men and women who see all things through this curtain of sea and my eyes are the color of water. I looked with chameleon eyes upon the changing face of the world, looked with anonymous vision upon my uncompleted self. I remember my first birth in water.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: House of Incest (1936)
“Worlds self made are so full of monsters and demons.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: House of Incest (1936)
“If only we could all escape from this house of incest, where we only love ourselves in the other, if only I could save you all from yourselves.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1936 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: House of Incest (1936)
“When one is pretending the entire body revolts.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Winter of Artifice (1939)
“Only in the fever of creation could she recreate her own lost life.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Winter of Artifice (1939)
“In the world of the dreamer there was solitude: all the exaltations and joys came in the moment of preparation for living. They took place in solitude. But with action came anxiety, and the sense of insuperable effort made to match the dream, and with it came weariness, discouragement, and the flight into solitude again. And then in solitude, in the opium den of remembrance, the possibility of pleasure again.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Children of the Albatross (1947)
“This image of herself as a not ordinary women, an image which was trembling now in his eyes, might suddenly disappear. Nothing more difficult to live up to than men’s dreams.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1947 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Children of the Albatross (1947)
“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, but never of natural death.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Four-Chambered Heart (1950), p. 48
“Every word you wrote I ate, as if it were manna. Finding one's self in a book is a second birth; and you are the only one who knows that at times men behave like women and women like men, and that all these distinctions are mock distinctions.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Collages (1964), p. 114
“Human beings can reach such desperate solitude that they may cross a boundary beyond which words cannot serve, and at such moments there is nothing left for them but to bark.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Collages (1964), p. 116
“Solitude may rust your words.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Collages (1964), p. 116
“The preoccupation of the novelist: how to capture the living moments, was answered by the diary. You write while you are alive. You do not preserve them in alcohol until the moment you are ready to write about them.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Woman As Writer (1978) by Jeannette L. Webber and Joan Grumman, p. 42
“Art is the method of levitation, in order to separate one's self from enslavement by the earth.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Sunbeams : A Book of Quotations (1990) by Sy Safransky, p. 137
“The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in The Last Word : A Treasury of Women's Quotes (1992) by Carolyn Warner, p. 191
“I had a feeling that Pandora's box contained the mysteries of woman's sensuality, so different from man's and for which man's language was inadequate. The language of sex had yet to be invented. The language of the senses was yet to be explored. D. H. Lawrence began to give instinct a language, he tried to escape the clinical, the scientific, which only captures what the body feels.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in D. H. Lawrence and Nine Women Writers (1996) by Leo Hamalian, p. 90
“Life is so fluid that one can only hope to capture the living moment, to capture it alive and fresh ... without destroying that moment.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in D. H. Lawrence and Nine Women Writers (1996) by Leo Hamalian, p. 93
“Life shrinks or expands according to one's courage.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in French Writers of the Past (2000) by Carol A. Dingle, p. 126
“The final lesson a writer learns is that everything can nourish the writer. The dictionary, a new word, a voyage, an encounter, a talk on the street, a book, a phrase learned.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in French Writers of the Past (2000) by Carol A. Dingle, p. 126
“Electric flesh-arrows 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 (1903–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in French Writers of the Past (2000) by Carol A. Dingle, p. 126
“The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) said by 1977 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in French Writers of the Past (2000) by Carol A. Dingle, p. 127
“Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in A Woman's Journal : A Blank Book with Quotes by Women (2002) by Running Press Staff, p. 1932
“I had always believed in Andre Breton's freedom, to write as one thinks, in the order and disorder in which one feels in thinks, to follow sensations and absurd correlations of events and images, to trust to the new realms they lead one into. "The cult of the marvelous." Also the cult of the unconscious leadership, the cult of mystery, the evasion of false logic. The cult of the unconscious as proclaimed by Rimbaud. It is not madness. It is an effort to transcend the rigidities and the patterns made by the rational mind.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Winter, 1931-1932 The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume One 1931-1934
“Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Winter, 1931-1932
“The truly faithless one is the one who makes love to only a fraction of you. And denies the rest.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: February, 1932
“For you and for me the highest moment, the keenest joy, is not when our minds dominate but when we lose our minds...”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: February, 1932
“My life is slowed up by thought and the need to understand what I am living.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: February, 1932
“Passion gives me moments of wholeness.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: February, 1932
“We don't have a language for the senses. Feelings are images, sensations are like musical sounds.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: February, 1932
“Women always think that when they have my shoes, my dress, my hairdresser, my makeup, it will all work the same way. They do not conceive of the witchcraft that is needed. They do not know that I am not beautiful but that I only appear to be at certain moments.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: June 1932 Henry and June
“Nothing too long imagined can be perfect in a worldly way.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: June 1932 Henry and June
“Love reduces the complexity of living.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: June 1932 Henry and June
“The basis of insincerity is the idealized image we hold of ourselves and wish to impose on others.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: July 1932, The Diary Of Anaïs Nin, Volume One (1931-1934)
“To lie, of course, is to engender insanity.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: August 1932 Henry and June
“I see myself wrapped in lies, which do not seem to penetrate my soul, as if they are not really a part of me. They are like costumes.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: August 1932 Henry and June
“There will never be darkness because in both of us there's always movement, renewal, surprises. I have never known stagnation. Not even introspection has been a still experience...”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: August 1932 Henry and June
“You are so terribly nimble, so clever. I distrust your cleverness. You make a wonderful pattern, everything is in its place, it looks convincingly clear, too clear. And meanwhile, where are you? Not on the clear surface of your ideas, but you have already sunk deeper, into darker regions, so that one only thinks one has been given all your thoughts, one only imagines you have emptied yourself in that clarity. But there are layers and layers — you're bottomless, unfathomable. Your clearness is deceptive. You are the thinker who arouses most confusion in me, most doubt, most disturbance.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: August 1932 Henry and June
“This abdiction of life demanded of the artist is to be achieved only relatively. Most artists have retired too absolutely; they grow rusty, inflexible to the flow of currents.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1932 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: November 26, 1932
“I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: March, 1933
“I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic — in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: March 25, 1933
“I need a place where I can shout and weep. I have to be a Spanish savage at some time of the day. I record here the hysteria life causes in me. The overflow of an undisciplined extravagance. To hell with taste and art, with all contractions and polishings. Here I shout, I dance, I weep, I gnash my teeth, I go mad — all by myself, in bad English, in chaos. It will keep me sane for the world and for art .”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Oct. 27, 1933 (writing about her diary)
“When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: November, 1933
“For me, the adventures of the mind, each inflection of thought, each movement, nuance, growth, discovery, is a source of exhilaration.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1933 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: November, 1933
“People living deeply have no fear of death.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
“He was insane with anger. Or is all insanity anger?”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
“You cannot save people, you can only love them.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
“I have so strong a sense of creation, of tomorrow, that I cannot get drunk, knowing I will be less alive, less well, less creative the next day.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
“Someday I'll be locked up for love insanity. "She loved too much.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)
“The times in his studio when he washed his hands and they smoked, for his hands were so warm and the water so cold.”
Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) first seen 1934 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Diary Of Anais Nin, Volume Two (1934-1939)