Nin Quotes

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

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

Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.

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

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

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

Experience teaches acceptance of the imperfect as life.

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

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.

Dreams are necessary to life.

The obstacle became his alibi for weakness.

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."

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

You fall in love with people's minds.

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

I was stirred only like a leaf in the wind, that is all. . .

This diary is my kief, hashish and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice.

In chaos, there is fertility.

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.

The child who is uprooted begins to recognize that what he builds within himself is what will endure, what will withstand shattering experiences.

Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life.

I am only responsible for my own heart, you offered yours up for the smashing my darling. Only a fool would give out such a vital organ

Everything but happiness is neurosis.

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

Our culture made a virtue of living only as extroverts. We discouraged the inner journey, the quest for a center. So we lost our center and have to find it again.

The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.

I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason.

His life rushes onward in such torrential rhythm that...only angels and devils can catch the tempo of it.

My life is slowed up by thought and the need to understand what I am living.

I am like a snake who has already bitten. I retreat from a direct battle while knowing the slow effect of the poison.

Write. Write until it stops hurting.

The creative personality never remains fixed on the first world it discovers. It never resigns itself to anything.

My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.

Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are.

When one is pretending the entire body revolts.

There are two ways to reach me: by way of kisses or by way of the imagination. But there is a hierarchy: the kisses alone don't work.

We are cruel when someone refuses to play the role in which we have cast him. We judge a person only according to his relationship towards us.

The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation.

Every individual is representative of the whole . . . and should be intimately understood, and this would give a far greater understanding of mass movements and sociology.

I sleep with my feet on moss carpets, my branches in the cotton of the clouds.

Introspection is a devouring monster. You have to feed it with much material, much experience, many people, many places, many loves, many creations, and then it ceases feeding on you.

Now that I am moving, I am afraid. Where am I going?

We love best those who are, or act for us, a self we do not wish to be or act out.

I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go.

Love men and women not for their strength but their softness, not for their fullness but their hunger, not for their plenty but their need.