Anaïs Nin Quotes

French-born American author (1903–1977)

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Anaïs Nin (Spanish pronunciation: [anaˈiz ˈnin]; 21 February 1903 – 14 January 1977), born Angela Anais Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell, was a French-born author of Spanish, Cuban, and Danish descent who became famous for her published journals, which span more than sixty years, and for her erotica.

From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Alternative Names: Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell • Anais Nin • Ángela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin Culmell

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I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live.

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.

I write emotional algebra.

I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing.

I disregard the proportions, the measures, the tempo of the ordinary world. I refuse to live in the ordinary world as ordinary women. To enter ordinary relationships. I want ecstasy. I am a neurotic — in the sense that I live in my world. I will not adjust myself to the world. I am adjusted to myself.

I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.

Our love of each other was like two long shadows kissing without hope of reality.

Dreams are necessary to life.

Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension. But I am not always in what I call a state of grace. I have days of illuminations and fevers. I have days when the music in my head stops. Then I mend socks, prune trees, can fruits, polish furniture. But while I am doing this I feel I am not living.

Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.

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 known, because she had ventured so far into emotion and had abandoned herself to it.

The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.

What I cannot love, I overlook.

Each contact with a human being is so rare, so precious, one should preserve it.

Societies in decline have no use for visionaries.