"Anais Nin Quotes" are more than just words; they are windows into the mind and soul of a remarkable writer, diarist, and feminist thinker. Anais Nin, known for her introspective and poetic observations on life, love, and the human experience, has left behind a treasure trove of profound and thought-provoking quotes that continue to resonate with readers around the world. In these eloquent and evocative passages, she captures the essence of human emotions, relationships, and the intricate tapestry of existence. Join us on this journey as we dive into the profound world of "Anais Nin Quotes" and discover the insights, emotions, and revelations they offer to those who seek them.
Anais Nin Quotes (2024)
Explore the profound insights and poetic wisdom of Anais Nin through a curated collection of her quotes that touch upon life, love, self-discovery, and the human experience.
"We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are."
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage."
"The role of a writer is not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say."
"The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery."
"I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason."
"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source."
"You cannot save people. You can only love them."
"Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again, and this interdependence produces the highest form of living."
"Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity, and stumble from defeat to defeat."
"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."
"I want to live, and I want my life to be an exciting adventure."
"I must be a mermaid, Rango. I have no fear of depths and a great fear of shallow living."
"The secret of joy is the mastery of pain."
"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through."
"We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls."
"Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country."
"To lie, of course, is first and foremost the act of self-delusion, the way we tell ourselves things we would not want to hear from anyone else."
"What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny."
"I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness."
"Life is a full circle, widening until it joins the circle motions of the infinite."
"I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women."
"There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do."
"Living never wore one out so much as the effort not to live."
"People living deeply have no fear of death."
"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another."
"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."
"You live out the confusions until they become clear."
"I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don't know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness."
"My mission, should I choose to accept it, is to find peace with exactly who and what I am."
"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."
"The only abnormality is the incapacity to love."
"The dream was always running ahead of me. To catch up, to live for a moment in unison with it, that was the miracle."
"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."
"Life is a process that we are a part of, and the artist is an instrument that plays a part in this process."
"I cannot concentrate all my friendship on any single one of my friends because no one is complete enough in himself."
"The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself."
"The only way to deal with life is to find the sense of it."
"I have a feeling there is a new kind of sensibility in the air."
"To think of what should be done in the worst times, and what must be done in the best times, is the character of a wise man."
"To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are."
"Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic."
"The artist deals in what cannot be said in words."
"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."
"I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me."
"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say."
"Dreams are necessary to life."
"Good things happen to those who hustle."
"I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed."
"I want to do things so wild with you that I don't know how to say them."
"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is when they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death."
"There are always two deaths, the real one and the one people know about."
"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, and childish in another. The past, present and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations."
"Life is a process that must be experienced in the present moment. You cannot grasp it or hold onto it; you can only live it."
"Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings."
"I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy."
"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
"I hate men who are afraid of women's strength."
"You don't find love, it finds you. It's got a little bit to do with destiny, fate, and what's written in the stars."
"I don't really want to become normal, average, standard. I want merely to gain in strength, in the courage to live out my life more fully, enjoy more, experience more. I want to develop even more original and more unconventional traits."
"What I cannot love, I overlook."
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
"What I cannot love, I overlook. Is that real friendship?"
"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."
"Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat."
"How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself."
"It's all right for a woman to be, above all, human. I am a woman first of all."
"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."
"I want to live so densely. Lush. And slow in the next few years, that a year becomes ten years, and my past becomes only a page in the book of my life."
"We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are."
"To live in the world of creation - to get into it and stay in it - to frequent it in any way - to inhale its odour, to contact it in any way - is solitary, and an ecstasy."
"We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are."
"Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age."
"I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman."
"I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing."
"I want to love you wildly. I don't want words, but inarticulate cries, meaningless, from the bottom of my most primitive being, that flow from my belly like honey."
"I am an artist… I am here to live out loud."
"It is easy to love when we are in love."
"Love possesses not nor will it be possessed, for love is sufficient unto love."
"I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don’t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding."
"I am like the Minotaur, half beast, half book… I am the most complex and dangerous of beasts, because I carry both passions within myself."
"What is real? Real is what endures. What does not disappear as soon as one questions it. The test of reality is that it is still there even when you stop believing in it."
"The only way to deal with death is to transform everything that precedes it into art, to express all that preceded it as a work of art."
"You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book… or you take a trip… and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom (when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this (or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death."
"To lie, of course, is to engender insanity."
"I need someone who can take a woman through the eye of a needle."
"Love is not weak, feeble, or soft. Love is the strength that can move mountains."
"I want to hear raucous music, to see faces, to brush against bodies, to drink fiery Benedictine. Beautiful women and handsome men arouse fierce desires in me. I want to dance. I want drugs. I want to know perverse people, have the wildest kinds of sexual experiences. I feel bound by rules, conventions."
"We do not escape into philosophy, psychology, and art — we go there to restore our shattered selves into whole ones."
"I want to live my life so that my nights are not full of regrets."
"I cannot live without my soul."
"Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them."
"I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next."
"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 cannot 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."
"My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living."
"You do not die, but your world dies in you; thus you become eternal."
"The value of personal experience is that it truly resides within you; it is not transferable, it cannot be described, only experienced."
"The artist deals in what cannot be said in words. The artist whose medium is fiction does this in words."
"I have an immense appetite for solitude, like an infant for sleep, and if I don't get enough for this year, I shall cry all the next."
"You do not die, but your world dies in you; thus you become eternal."
In exploring the profound wisdom of Anais Nin's words, we have embarked on a journey through the intricate tapestry of life's complexities and human emotions. Anais Nin's quotes resonate deeply with our shared human experiences, reminding us that life is not a linear path, but a multidimensional voyage, where growth and self-discovery often arise from the most unexpected corners. These quotes serve as poignant reminders that our lives are ever-evolving narratives, and each moment holds the potential for transformation and transcendence.
