Anaïs Nin: Trending quotes (page 9)

“I see enormous loves growing immense and finally crushing me.”

“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.”

“The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.”

“All that is sacred and taboo in the world are meaningless.”

“The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation.”

“You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book (Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, 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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“Some people read to confirm their own hopelessness. Others read to be rescued from it.”

“I prefer empty cages, Sabina, until I find a unique bird I once saw in my dreams.”

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

“I love your silences, they are like mine.”

“The woman will sit eternally in the tall black armchair. I will be the one woman you will never have… excessive living weighs down the imagination: we will not live, we will only write and talk to swell the sails.”

“The two men who have done the greatest harm to the world are Christ and Columbus. Christ taught us guilt and sacrifice, to live only in the other world, and Columbus discovered America and materialism.”

“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.”

“Pain is something to master, not to wallow in.”

“My first vision of earth was water veiled.”

“Where the myth fails, human love begins. Then we love a human being, not our dream, but a human being with flaws.”

“My ideas usually come not at my desk writing but in the midst of living.”