Quotes from Anais Nin

It takes courage to push yourself to places you have never been before... to test yout limits... to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to stay tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossum.

I would like to have your sureness. I am waiting for love, the core of a woman's life. Don't wait for it, I said. Create a world, your world. Alone. Stand alone. And then love will come to you, then it comes to you. It was only when I wrote my first book that the world I wanted to live in opened to me.

The enemy of a love is never outside, it's not a man or a woman, it's what we lack in ourselves.

I'm restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.

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

He was jealous of her future, and she of his past.

I love your silences, they are like mine. You are the only being before whom I am not distressed by my own silences. You have a vehement silence, one feels it is charged with essences, it is a strangely alive silence, like a trap open over a well, from which one can hear the secret murmur of the earth itself.

I wanted to remember in order to be able to return.

I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing.

We do not escape into philosophy, psychology, and art--we go there to restore our shattered selves into whole ones.

I wept because I could not believe anymore and I love to believe. I can still love passionately without believing. That means I love humanly. I wept because from now on I will weep less. I wept because I have lost my pain and I am not yet accustomed to its absence.

Also, I do not like the companionship of women. They are petty and personal. They hang on to their mysteries and secrets, they act and pretend. I like the character of men better.

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.

I feel a little like the moon who took possession of you for a moment and then returned your soul to you. You should not love me. One ought not to love the moon. If you come too near me, I will hurt you.

And the time came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

The monster I kill every day is the monster of realism. The monster who attacks me every day is destruction. Out of the duel comes the transformation. I turn destruction into creation over and over again.

The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison, was the miracle.

What you burnt, broke, and tore is still in my hands. I am the keeper of fragile things and I have kept of you what is indissoluble.

Since desire always goes towards that which is our direct opposite, it forces us to love that which will make us suffer.

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

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

Things I forgot to tell you: That I love you, and that when I awake in the morning I use my intelligence to discover more ways of appreciating you. That when June comes back she will love you more because I have loved you. There are new leaves on the tip and climax of your already overrich head. That I love you. That I love you. That I love you. I have become an idiot like Gertrude Stein. That's what love does to intelligent women. They cannot write letters anymore.

For too many centuries women have been being muses to artists. I wanted to be the muse, I wanted to be the wife of the artist, but I was really trying to avoid the final issue — that I had to do the job myself.

I want to love you wildly. I don't want words, but inarticulate cries, meaningless, from the bottom of my most primitive being, that flow from my belly like honey. A piercing joy, that leaves me empty, conquered, silenced.