Anaïs Nin Quotes

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene and as if by magic we see a new meaning in it.

~ Anaïs Nin

I'm in love with New York. It matches my mood. I'm not overwhelmed. It is the suitable scene for my ever ever heightened life. I love the proportions, the amplitude, the brilliance, the polish, the solidity. I look up at Radio City insolently and love it. It's all great, and Babylonian. Broadway at night. Cellophane. The newness. The vitality. True, it is only physical. But it's inspiring. Just bring your own contents, and you create a sparkle of the highest power. I'm not moved, not speechless. I stand straight, tough and I meet the impact. I feel the glow and the dancing in everything. The radio music in the taxis, scientific magic, which can all be used lyrically. That's my last word. Give New York to a poet. He can use it. It can be poetized. Or maybe that's mania of mine, to poetize. I live lightly, smoothly, actively, ears or eyes wide open, alert, oiled! I feel the glow and the dancing in every thing and the tempo is like that of my blood. I'm at once beyond, over and in New York, tasting it fully.

~ Anaïs Nin

At five o'clock Paris always has a current of eroticism in the air.

~ Anaïs Nin

Do you have regrets that we were so overwhelmed? Do you ever wish to live those hours over again and differently, with more confidence.

~ Anaïs Nin

Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together.

~ Anaïs Nin

The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.

~ Anaïs Nin

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.

~ Anaïs Nin

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.

~ Anaïs Nin

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.

~ Anaïs Nin

Age does not protect you from love. But love, to some extent, protects you from age.

~ Anaïs Nin

A leaf fluttered in through the window this morning, as if supported by the rays of the sun, a bird settled on the fire escape, joy in the task of coffee, joy accompanied me as I walked.

~ Anaïs Nin

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

~ Anaïs Nin

How wrong it is for a woman to expect the man to build the world she wants, rather than to create it herself.

~ Anaïs Nin

Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.

~ Anaïs Nin

There are many ways to be free. One of them is to transcend reality by imagination, as I try to do.

~ Anaïs Nin

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.

~ Anaïs Nin

Each friend represents a world in us, a world not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.

~ Anaïs Nin

What I cannot love, I overlook. Is that real friendship?

~ Anaïs Nin

I stopped loving my father a long time ago. What remained was the slavery to a pattern.

~ Anaïs Nin