Anaïs Nin quotes - page 9

The final lesson a writer learns is that everything can nourish the writer. (Anaïs Nin)
The preoccupation of the novelist: how to capture the living moments, was answered by the diary. You write while you are alive. You do not preserve them in alcohol until the moment you are ready to write about them. View quote
Anaïs Nin
I had been struck by the analogy between neurosis and romanticism. Romanticism was truly a parallel to neurosis. It demanded of reality an illusory world, love, an absolute which it could never obtain, and thus destroyed itself by the dream. View quote
Anaïs Nin
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. View quote
Anaïs Nin
We did not touch each other. We were both leaning over the abyss. View quote
Anaïs Nin
The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body. View quote
Anaïs Nin
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' View quote
Anaïs Nin
The leaf fall of his words, the stained glass hues of his moods, the rust in his voice, the smoke in his mouth, his breath on my vision like human breath blinding a mirror. View quote
Anaïs Nin
This great handsomeness I took into myself later when he desired me, but I took it as one breathes air, or swallows a snowflake, or yields to the sun. View quote
Anaïs Nin
A man fell in love with Jeanne, and she tried to love him. But she complained that he uttered such ordinary words, that he could never say the magic phrase which would open her being. View quote
Anaïs Nin
A big enough artist, I say, can eat anything, must eat everything and then alchemize it. Only the feeble writer is afraid of expansion. (Anaïs Nin)
She makes use of the soft of the bread for a napkin. She falls asleep at times with shoes on, on unmade beds. When a little money comes in, June buys delicacies, strawberries in the winter, caviar and bath salts. View quote
Anaïs Nin
Our age has need of violence," he writes. And he is violence. View quote
Anaïs Nin
I see enormous loves growing immense and finally crushing me. View quote
Anaïs Nin
I love your silences, they are like mine. You are the only being before whom I am not distressed by my own silences. You have a vehement silence, one feels it is charged with essences, it is a strangely alive silence, like a trap open over a well, from which one can hear the secret murmur of the earth itself. View quote
Anaïs Nin
Warmth, perfume, rugs, soft lights, books. They do not appease me. I am aware of time passing, of all the world contains that I have not seen, of all the interesting people I have not met. View quote
Anaïs Nin
He understands my pity for his ridiculous, humiliating physical necessity. View quote
Anaïs Nin
I know no joy as great as a moment of rushing into a new love, no ecstasy like that of a new love. View quote
Anaïs Nin
Most artists have retired too absolutely; they grow rusty, inflexible to the flow of currents. View quote
Anaïs Nin
I palliate the sufferings of others. yes I see myself as softening the blows, dissolving acids, neutralizing poisons, every moment of the day. I try to fulfill the wishes of others, to perform miracles. I exert myself performing miracles. View quote
Anaïs Nin
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. (Anaïs Nin)
To commit suicide is easy. To live without a god is more difficult. The drunkenness of triumph is greater than the drunkenness of sacrifice. View quote
Anaïs Nin
she acquired the certainty of the expansion of time by depth of emotion, range and infinite multiplicity of experience. View quote
Anaïs Nin
The morning I got up to begin this book I coughed. Something was coming out of my throat: it was strangling me. I broke the thread which held it and yanked it out. I went back to bed and said: I have just spat out my heart. View quote
Anaïs Nin
I hate rarely, though when I hate, I hate murderously. View quote
Anaïs Nin