Quotes by Anaïs Nin

“Jazz is the music of the body. The breath comes through brass. It is the body’s breath, and the strings’ wails and moans are echoes of the body’s music. It is the body’s vibrations which ripple fro...”

“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.”

“Djuna had wanted a life of desire and freedom, not luxury but beauty, not security but fulfillment, not perfection but a perfect moment like this one...”

“There is a fissure in my vision and madness will always rush through.”

“I walked into my own book, seeking peace.It was night, and I made a careless movement inside the dream; I turned too brusquely the corner and I bruised myself against my madness.”

“The origin of illness may be in the past, but the virulent crisis must be dynamically tackled. I believe in attacking the core of the illness, through its present symptoms, quickly, directly. The p...”

“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.”

“There are women’s voices that sound like poetic, unearthly echoes. Then they change. The eyes change. I believe that all these legends about people changing into animals at night – like the stories...”

“He, who had done more than any human being to draw her out of the caves of her secret, folded life, now threw her down into deeper recesses of fear and doubt. The fall was greater than she had ever...”

“We write to lure and enchant and console others. We write to serenade our lovers. We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection... We write to be able to transcend our life, to ...”

“Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive.”

“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 sl...”

“There is a resemblance between men and women, not a contrast. When a man begins to recognize his feeling, the two unite. When men accept the sensitive side of themselves, they come alive.”

“We speak of the masculine and the feminine, but they are the wrong labels. It is really more a matter of poetry versus intellectualization.”

“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 hur...”

“In chaos, there is fertility.”

“We are punctual, a stressed, marked characteristic. We need order around us, in the house, in the life, although we live by irresistible impulses, as if the order in the closets, in our papers, in ...”

“What you call your lies are fiction and myths. The art of creating a disguise can be as beautiful as the creation of a painting… I created a woman for my artist life, bold, gay, courageous, generou...”

“She had acquired some of his gypsy ways, some of his nonchalance, his bohemian indiscipline. She had swung with him into the disorders of strewn clothes, spilled cigarette ashes, slipping into bed ...”

“When you trust, you are tender and delicate, but when you doubt, you are dangerous and destructive”