Quotes from Anais Nin

The unknown was my compass. The unknown was my encyclopedia. The unnamed was my science and progress.

Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me. I escape, one way or another. No more walls.

The secret of life was Breath. That was what I always wanted my words to do, to Breathe.

The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.

I know why families were created with all their imperfections. They humanize you. They are made to make you forget yourself occasionally, so that the beautiful balance of life is not destroyed.

Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again; and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.

although I love a rich life, I hate an overcrowded life. I believe in rumination and lose half the beauty of all things when I am deprived of the time to ruminate.

Life is a full circle, widening until it joins the circle motions of the infinite.

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

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.

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.

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

The suppression of inner patterns in favor of patterns created by society is dangerous to us.

Experience teaches acceptance of the imperfect as life.

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

Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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