Quotes from Anais Nin

I am quite wiling to confide entirely in human being, except that at some moment or another human beings get preoccupied, moody, busy, inattentive, and there come an end to the interest, and this never happens in a journal!

It is right that you should read according to your temperament, occupations, hobbies, and vocations. But it is a sign of great inner insecurity to be hostile to the unfamiliar, unwilling to explore the unfamiliar. In science, we respect the research worker. In literature, we should not always read the books blessed by the majority.

When life becomes too difficult, I turn to my work. I swim into a new region.

I will cover the walls with words. It will be la chambre des mots.

The fascination exerted by one human being over another is not what he emits of his personality at the present instant of encounter but a summation of his entire being which gives off this powerful drug capturing the fancy and attachment.

I want eroticism mixed with love, and deep love one does not experience often.

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

Strange, isn't it, that no chemical will give a human being the iridescence that illusions have given them? Give me your hat.

I adore the struggle you carry in yourself. I adore your terrifying sincerity.

A man is what he does every day," said Emerson.

I weep because you cannot save people. You can only love them. You can't transform them, you can only console them.

Abnormal pleasures kill the taste for normal ones.

Love reduces the complexity of living. It amazes me that when Henry walks towards the cafe table where I wait for him, or opens the gate to our house, the sight of him is sufficient to exult me. No letter from anyone, even in praise of my book, can stir me as much as a note from him.

She abandoned herself to his whim, thinking it was to be an orgy of eyes and hands only.

The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.

Lillian was reminded of the Talmudic words: We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.

The living out in excess kills the imagination and the intensity

When I am happy it is so rare. I need to dwell on it, to contemplate it. What a hunger, a craving for beautiful things.

the cape held within its folds something of what she imagined was a quality possessed exclusively by man: some dash, some audacity, some swagger of freedom denied to woman

I'm in love with New York. When you bring your own riches to it, it is like drinking from a Venetian glass. It is beautiful, vital, and magical.

I walk into the fire always, and come out more alive.

His room was like an explorer's den, a lair of furs, the cave of a magician.

He worked on small canvases with a touch as light as a cobweb and coloring made of mirages. He lived there, at the bottom of the sea...

I love you, June, and you know how acutely, how desperately. You know that no one can say or do anything to shake my love. I have taken you into myself, whole. You need have no fear of being unmasked, only loved.