Quotes from Anais Nin

The risk it takes to remain tight inside the bud is more painful than the risk it takes to blossom. We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.

When I cannot bear outer pressures anymore, I begin to put order in my belongings...As if unable to organize and control my life, I seek to exert this on the world of objects.

Don't let one cloud obliterate the whole sky.

willingness to explore everything is a sign of strength. The weak ones have prejudices. Prejudices are a protection.

If one's conscious life is too rigid, too regimented, then the surface may crack at times, and we are unprepared for the strange emotions or sensations we experience.

To withhold from living is to die ... the more you give of yourself to life the more life nourishes you.

I have no brakes on...analysis is for those who are paralyzed by life.

myself ... is merely an instrument to connect life and a myth

Life is so fluid that one can only hope to capture the living moment, to capture it alive and fresh ... without destroying that moment.

The poet is one who is able to keep the fresh vision of the child alive.

In New York the acoustics are good for laughter, for life is all external, all action, no thought, no meditation, no dreaming, no reflection, only the exuberance of action.

Dreams are essential to life.

Either one fails in one's art or in one's life.

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage "People living deeply have no fear of death.

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.

There are two ways to reach me: by way of kisses or by way of the imagination. But there is a hierarchy: the kisses alone don't work.

You cannot save people. You can only love them.

Sometimes we reveal ourselves when we are least like ourselves.

Last night I wept. I wept because the process by which I have become woman was painful. I wept because I was no longer a child with a child's blind faith. I wept because my eyes were opened to reality....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 I have lost my pain and I am not yet accustomed to its absence.

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all; there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.

I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic — in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.

I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.

Our love of each other was like two long shadows kissing without hope of reality.