Anais Nin Quotes

If I love you it means we share the same fantasies, the same madnesses

In music I feel most deeply the passing of things.

I believe the lasting revolution comes from deep changes in ourselves which influence our collective life.

"We see the world as 'we' are, not as 'it' is; because it is the "I" behind the 'eye' that does the seeing."

What everyone forgets is that passion is not merely a heightened sensual fusion but a way of life which produces, as in the mystics, an ecstatic awareness of the whole of life.

When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.

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

It is in the movements of emotional crisis that human beings reveal themselves most accurately.

I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live.

Eroticism is one of the basic means of self-knowledge, as indispensable as poetry.

I am a winged creature who is too rarely allowed to use its wings. Ecstasies do not occur often enough.

I only believe in fire. Life. Fire. Being myself on fire I set others on fire. Never death. Fire and life.

Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous.

Ordinary life does not interest me.

I either eat too much or starve myself. Sleep for 14 hours or have insomniac nights. Fall in love very hard or hate passionately. I don't know what grey is. I never did.

It is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar.

The secret of joy is the mastery of pain.

I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through.

I walked into my own book, seeking peace. It was night, and I made a careless movement inside the dream; I turned too brusquely the corner and I bruised myself against my madness.

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.

Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.

The self is merely the lens through which we see others and the world.

You live out the confusions until they become clear.

I will always be the virgin-prostitute, the perverse angel, the two-faced sinister and saintly woman.

I don't tell the truth any more to those who can't make use of it. I tell it mostly to myself, because it always changes me.

The only transformer and alchemist that turns everything into gold is love. The only magic against death, aging, ordinary life, is love.

it was while helping others to be free that I gained my own freedom.

One handles truths like dynamite.

Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.

No one should be forced to carry the unfulfilled self of another.

Experience teaches acceptance of the imperfect as life.

Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go.

He does not need opium. He has the gift of reverie.

Things aren't the way they are, they're the way you are

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.

The artist is the only one who knows that the world is a subjective creation, that there is a choice to be made, a selection of elements.

The obstacle became his alibi for weakness.

You fall in love with people's minds.

At a lecture I am asked to pronounce my name three times. I try to be slow and emphatic, "Anaïs - Anaïs - Anaïs. You just say "Anna" and then add "ees," with the accent on the "ees."

The fiery moments of passionate experience are the moments of wholeness and totality of the personality.

Nature forms us for ourselves, not for others; to be, not to seem.

Expressing feelings is linked directly with creation... In this ability to tap the sources of feeling and imagination lies the secret of abundance.

Passion gives me moments of wholeness.

You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too.

The earth is heavy and opaque without dreams.

I made no resolutions for the New Year. The habit of making plans, of criticizing, sanctioning and molding my life, is too much of a daily event for me.

Everything but happiness is neurosis.