Quotes
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Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction.
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.
I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.
Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terror, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons.
The Diary of Ana�s Nin, Vol. 4: 1944-1947
When others asked the truth of me, I was convinced it was not the truth they wanted, but an illusion they could bear to live with.
I prefer by far the warmth and softness to mere brilliancy and coldness. Some people remind me of sharp dazzling diamonds. Valuable but lifeless and loveless. Others, of the simplest field flowers, with hearts full of dew and with all the tints of celestial beauty reflected in their modest petals.
The Early Diary of Ana�s Nin, Vol. 2: 1920-1923
I have no brakes on... analysis is for those who are paralyzed by life.
The Diary of Ana�s Nin, Vol. 1: 1931-1934
Our life is composed greatly from dreams, from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together.
Creation which cannot express itself becomes madness.
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On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays
Essays