Anais Nin Quotes

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anais Nin

“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.”
― Anais Nin

“I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living.”
― Anais Nin

“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.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

“In chaos, there is fertility.”
― Anais Nin

“Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together. ”
― Anais Nin

“To hell, to hell with balance! I break glasses; I want to burn, even if I break myself. I want to live only for ecstasy. I’m neurotic, perverted, destructive, fiery, dangerous - lava, inflammable, unrestrained.”
― Anaïs Nin

“Good things happen to those who hustle.”
― Anais Nin

“I'm restless. Things are calling me away. My hair is being pulled by the stars again.”
― Anaïs Nin

“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.”
― Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus

“You do not know what you are missing by your microscopic examination of sexual activity to the exclusion of aspects which are fuel that ignites it. Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements. You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood.”
― Anais Nin

“1) Work on one thing at a time until finished.
2) Start no more new books, add no more new material to "Black Spring."
3) Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
4) Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
5) When you can't create you can work.
6) Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
7) Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
8) Don't be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
9) Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
10) Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
11) Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.”
― Henry Miller

“And in his eyes he had the look of the cat who inspires a desire to caress but loves no one, who never feels he must respond to the impulses he arouses.”
― Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus

“Coming near him like a ballet dancer she took a leap towards him, and he, frightened by her vehemence, and fearing that she would crash against him, instinctively became absolutely rigid, and she felt herself embracing a statue.”
― anais nin

“Life is a full circle, widening until it joins the circle motions of the infinite.”
― Anais Nin

“The man who was once starved may revenge himself upon the world not by stealing just once, or by stealing only what he needs, but by taking from the world an endless toll in payment of something irreplaceable, which is the lost faith.”
― anais nin

“When you trust, you are tender and delicate, but when you doubt, you are dangerous and destructive”
― Anaïs Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel

“How do I look to him?" she asked herself. She got up and brought a long mirror towards the window. She stood it on the floor against a chair. Then she sat down in front of it on the rug and, facing it, slowly opened her legs. The sight was enchanting. The skin was flawless, the vulva, roseate and full. She thought it was like the gum plant leaf with its secret milk that the pressure of the finger could bring out, the odorous moisture that came like the moisture of the sea shells. So was Venus born of the sea with this little kernel of salty honey in her, which only caresses could bring out of the hidden recesses of her body.”
― Anaïs Nin, Delta of Venus

“You are that to me, an oasis. You drug me and at the same time you give me strength.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel

“I must know, he thinks. It must be clear to me. There is a world which is closed to him, a world of shadings, gradations, nuances, and subtleties. He is a genius and yet he is too explicit. June slips between his fingers. You cannot posses without loving.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934

“They courted the face on the screen, the face of translucence, the face of wax on which men found it possible to imprint the image of their fantasy.”
― anais nin

“His entire body was pleading for reassurance, and if her whole love was not enough what else could she give him to cure his doubt?”
― Anaïs Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel

“So many broken promises, each day an aborted wish, a lost object, a misplaced unread book, cluttering the room like an attic with discarded possessions.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel

“The magic beauty of simultaneity, to see the loved one rushing toward you at the same moment you are rushing toward him, the magic power of meeting, exactly at midnight to achieve union, the illusion of one common rhythm achieved by overcoming obstacles, deserting friends, breaking other bonds - all this was soon dissolved by his laziness, by his habit of missing every moment, of never keeping his word, of living perversely in a state of chaos, of swimming more naturally in a sea of failed intentions, broken promises, and aborted wishes”
― Anaïs Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel

“When you're in my arms, I know you're mine. But your feet are so swift, so swift, they carry you as lightly as wings, I never know where, too fast, too fast away from me.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel

“Every word spoken in the past accumulated forms and colors in the self. What flows through the veins besides blood is the distillation of every act committed, the sediment of all the visions, wishes, dreams and experiences. All the past emotions converge to tint the skin and flavor the lips, to regulate the pulse and produce crystals in the eyes.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel

“Love the great narcotic was the revealer in the alchemist's bottle rendering visible the most untraceable substances.
Love the great narcotic was the agent provocateur exposing all the secret selves to daylight.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel

“In this instant of danger they realized they were each other's reason for living, and into this instant they threw their whole being.”
― Anaïs Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel

“And it is that which draws me to you, too, for you are the tropics, you have the sun in you, and the softness and the clarity...”
― Anaïs Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel

“No man and woman know what will be born in the darkness of their intermingling; so much besides children, so many invisible births, exchanges of soul and character, blossoming of unknown selves, liberation of hidden treasures, buried fantasies...”
― Anaïs Nin, The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel