Quotes from Anais Nin

What makes some butterflies have such beautiful colors on their wings, and others not? The plain ones were born of parents who didn't know how to paint.

Now the evening is beginning and I will discover a human being to court or to be courted by, an adventure with caprice and desire, and while gambling I might find love.

Anaïs, I only thought I loved you before; it was nothing like this certainty that's in me now. Was all this so wonderful only because it was brief and stolen? Were we acting for each other, to each other?

Snow does not freeze the hands, but like ether distends the lungs until they burst. All the ships are sinking with fire in their bowels, and there are fires hissing in the cellars of every house.

I have come to the conclusion that the use and knowledge of words acts sometimes as a stumbling block rather than a clarifier.

Patients weep when they discover they are their own victimizers and not the victim of others. They weep when they discover they are responsible for their own suffering.

For me it is all symphonic, and I am so aroused by living—god, Henry, in you alone I have found the same swelling of enthusiasm, the same quick rising of the blood, the fullness, the fullness .

All creators are unhappy in life. All creators are absolutists.

The skins matched all the tones of chocolate, coffee and wood. There were many white suits and dresses, and many of those flowered dresses which in the realm of printed dresses stand in the same relation as the old paintings of flowers and fruit done by maiden aunts to a Matisse, or a Braque.

A couple was leaning over the railing, and Lillian could hear the woman say: Even if you don't mean it, just for tonight, say you love me. I won't ever remind you of it; I will not see you again, but just for tonight say you love me, say you love me.

I am not always just living, just following all my fantasies; I come up for air, for understanding.

safe there from inquiry and exposure? But in this jungle, a pair of eyes, not her own, had followed and found her. Her mother's eyes. She had first seen the world through her mother's eyes, and seen herself through her mother's eyes. Children were like kittens, at first they did not have vision, they did not see themselves except reflected in the eyes of the parents.

the discovery of each other brings a kind of peace, because it brings the certitude that we are right. We are stronger together ... we will have less doubts. This seemed deeply true, yet I wonder if it is good to ally similarities, one agreeing with the other, as twins might, so that this might give an illusion of balance, reassure us about our orientation, or whether we should seek this by contrast with others

What is the greatest need of human beings? What is it they seek from me always? Intimacy. I listen with all my being, I am completely interested. I seek momentarily a full communion of eyes, feelings, thoughts.

Men recognised her always: the same effulgent face, the same rust voice. And she and I, we recognised each other; I her face and she my legend.

I am enmeshed in my lies, and I want absolution. I cannot tell the truth because I have felt the heads of men in my womb. The truth would be death-dealing and I prefer fairytales. I am wrapped in lies which do not penetrate my soul. As if the lies I tell were like costumes. The shell of mystery can break and grow again over night. But the moment I step into the cavern of my lies I drop into the darkness. I see a face which stares at me like a cross-eyed man.

Literature, the ultimate gift for expressing the most subtle aspects of man's thought and feeling, may not survive persecution: first by religion, then by the bourgeoisie, then by Marxism, and now by commercialism. The

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.

Because I am a woman who understands, I am asked to understand everything, to accept everything.

To escape him she had run away to the end of the world. To be free of him she had run away to places where he never went.

Do you have regrets that we were so overwhelmed? Do you ever wish to live those hours over again and differently, with more confidence.

Very slowly, with hands, tongues, mouths, we unwrapped and untied ourselves, laying open gifts. Gave birth to each other again, as separate bodies who enjoy collision.

I am most deeply concerned over a trend toward conformity, a growth of anti-intellectualism, which manifests itself in a sneering attitude toward education, science, and the arts. The tendency is to stifle mental freedom, which is the very basis of a democracy's life and growth.

I have belonged to you in a way you haven't to me.