Quotes from Anais Nin

Her beauty goes to my head.

t is surprising how well one writes if one thinks no one will read. –

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are. And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom. Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.

Why does one's best writing require secrecy, silence, and darkness?

And oh, someday, what a treat you will have when you read Thiess . . . Frank Thiess.

Ri, Anaïs», diz Fred. «Henry diz que adora ouvir-te rir, que tu és a única mulher que possui o sentido da alegria, uma tolerância comedida»

I love when you say: 'All that happens is good.' I say, 'All that happens is wonderful.' For me it is all symphonic, and I am so aroused by living—God, Henry, in you alone I have found the same swelling enthusiasm, the same quick rising of the blood, the fullness. Before, I almost used to think there was something wrong. Everybody else seemed to have the brakes on. And when I feel your excitement about life flaring, next to mine, it makes me dizzy.

You blush before your tenderness.

Mi mente no debe morir porque soy escritora. Soy el poeta que necesita ver.

It is surprising how well one writes if one thinks no one will read.

Vienna! The name is magic to me (no, I don't destroy magic!) and I wanted to be so happy there with June, with Vienna, with her women, her lovely boulevards, her desuetude, her softness.

There are things one reads that make you aware that you have lived nothing, felt nothing, experienced nothing up to that time.

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

I like the hungry wat she looks at me

Would not write you a diary of life on board because it is only this: Oatmeal for breakfast. Swimming in the pool. Invitation for cocktail. Walk with So and So. Lunch with Mr. & Mrs. Nobody. Movies with Mr. Connecticut Yankee. Tea with Count Z. Cocktails with rich Jewish merchant. Dinner with X. Dancing until midnight.

I like the hungry way she looks at me

La vie se rétracte ou se dilate à proportion de notre courage

Motherhood is a vocation like any other. It should be freely chosen, not imposed upon woman.

I want to fall in love in such a way that the mere sight of a man, even a block away from me, will shake and pierce me, will weaken me, and make me tremble and soften and melt

Henry:] Was thinking last night apropos of "Mile. Claude" and Germaine that it was a pity that women could not enjoy gigolos in the same way as men enjoy a whore.

el amor entre mujeres es un refugio y un escape hacia la armonía. En el amor entre hombre y mujer hay resistencia y conflicto, dos mujeres no se juzgan mutuamente, no se embrutecen mutuamente, no buscan nada que ridiculizar. Se rinden al sentimentalismo, a la comprensión mutua, al romanticismo. Ese amor es la muerte, lo admito.

You know I just dispatched copies to Aldous Huxley & Ezra Pound—finally heard from them. And to Blaise Cendrars.‡ Also wrote a good letter to Emma Goldman.

When man imposes his will on woman she knows how to give him the pleasure of assuming his power is greater and his will becomes her pleasure; but when the woman accomplishes this, the man never gives her a feeling of any pleasure, only of guilt for having spoken first and reversed the roles.

The dogs bark at night. The garden smells of honeysuckle in the summer, of wet leaves in the winter. One hears the whistle of the small train from and to Paris. It is a train which looks ancient, as if it were still carrying the personages of Proust's novels to dine in the country.