“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.”
The Diary of Anaïs Nin , Volume One 1931-1934
Diary entries (1914 - 1974)
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Anaïs Nin 278
writer of novels, short stories, and erotica 1903–1977Related quotes
Hazel Grace Lancaster, p. 33
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)
The Intelligent Woman's Guide: To Socialism and Capitalism, New York: NY, Brentano (1928) p. 670.
1920s
“Don't believe the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.”
Misattributed
Source: Often attributed to Twain, but sourced to Robert J. Burdette, Quote Investigator http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/06/06/world-owes/
Source: Change of Heart
Interview in Writers at Work, First Series (1958), edited by George Plimpton
Variant: A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted at the end. You live several lives while reading it.
Source: Conversations with William Styron
arbitrarily assumed to be male
Viruses of the Mind (1993)
