Quotes from Anais Nin

I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.

I read the paper about suicides and murders and I understand it all thoroughly. I feel murderous, suicidal. I feel somehow that it is a disgrace to do nothing, to just bide one's time, to take it philosophically, to be sensible.

I study you so much to discover the possible flaws, the weak points, the danger zones. I don't find them—not any. That means I am in love, blind, blind. To be blind forever! (Now they're singing "Heaven and Ocean" from La Gioconda.)

Your voice getting hoarser, deeper, your eyes blacker, your blood thicker, your body fuller. A voluptuous servility and a tyrannical necessity. More cruel now than before—consciously, willfully cruel. The insatiable delight of experience.

Elena) Poderia o amor tornar-se um fogo que não queima, como as chamas dos homens santos da Índia? Estaria ela aprendendo a caminhar de modo mágico sobre carvões em brasa?

Elena) Algo criara dentro dela um estado de perpétua defesa contra as possibilidades de experiência, um impulso de fugir que a retirava das cenas de prazer onde poderia se expandir. Por muitas vezes atingira esse limiar, mas fugira. E só podia culpar a si própria pelo que perdera e ignorara.

The relief of opening one's hand and letting go was immense. But soon after, I tightened again. A desire for revenge, a strange revenge.

Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing.

Have been reading Spengler exultantly. I never expected to experience such a sense of wonder, of vastness and richness.

hayat bir olma sürecidir, içinden geçmemiz gereken süreçlerin bir kombinasyonudur. insanlar?n burada baÅŸar?s?z olduklar? nokta; bir durum, kendilerine bir hal seçip orada kalmak istemeleridir. bu bir nevi ölümdür.

I am stuck with the novel, but it is a good healthy stop; it is the minute when I choose forever one kind of writing from another. It's a desperate moment, but beyond the temporary paralysis, I feel already the joy of a good bold cutting out of the mediocre.

We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.

I feel that if I sit down now I will do some bad thinking about Lawrence. Remember Gide on Dostoevsky—"When he began to explain himself he showed himself a bad thinker.

I think sometimes that perhaps I have been unfair to put my writing above everything else. I am a man and I want my woman. If writing interferes then to hell with writing.

The liberation of the instincts, of the inchoate etc. (except that with Lawrence it is restricted to the sexual problem and Dostoevsky was larger).

She was always storming alone, being angry alone, going through vast emotional upheavals in which he did not take part.

Rebellion is a negative form of living.

Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.

The secret of joy is the mastery of pain.

Someone told me the delightful story of the crusader who put a chastity belt on his wife and gave the key to his best friend for safekeeping, in case of his death. He had ridden only a few miles away when his friend, riding hard, caught up with him, saying 'You gave me the wrong key!

I will always be the virgin-prostitute, the perverse angel, the two-faced sinister and saintly woman.

We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them.

What can I do with my happiness? How can I keep it, conceal it, bury it where I may never lose it? I want to kneel as it falls over me like rain, gather it up with lace and silk, and press it over myself again.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.