Anaïs Nin, The Diary Of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934 Quotes

I can elect something I love and absorb myself in it.

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.

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.

Introspection does not need to be a still life. It can be an active alchemy.

How can I accept a limited definable self when I feel, in me, all possibilities?... I never feel the four walls around the substance of the self, the core. I feel only space. Illimitable space.

I never lose sight of the whole. An impeccable dress is made to be lived in, to be torn, wet, stained, crumpled.

Wherever there is light, look for the shadow. The shadow is me.

We are dancing on our irony as upon the top of glowing sparks.