People living deeply have no fear of death.

ANAIS NIN, The Diary of Anais Nin

I believe one writes because one has to create a world in which one can live. I could not live in any of the worlds offered to me — the world of my parents, the world of war, the world of politics. I had to create a world of my own, like a climate, a country, an atmosphere in which I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art.

ANAIS NIN, diary, Feb. 1954

We are beginning to see the influence of dream upon reality and reality upon dream.

ANAIS NIN, The Novel of the Future

When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.

ANAIS NIN, diary, Feb. 1954

We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.

ANAÏS NIN, The Diary of Anaïs Nin

Man can never know the kind of loneliness a woman knows. Man lies in a woman's womb only to gather strength, he nourishes himself from this fusion, and then he rises and goes into the world, into his work, into battle, into art. He is not lonely. He is busy. The memory of the swim in amniotic fluid gives him energy, completion. The woman may be busy too, but she feels empty. Sensuality for her is not only a wave of pleasure in which he has bathed, and a charge of electric joy at contact with another. When man lies in her womb, she is fulfilled, each act of love is a taking of man within her, and act of birth and rebirth, of child bearing and man bearing. Man lies in her womb and is reborn each time anew with a desire to act, to BE. But for a woman, the climax is not in the birth, but in the moment when man rests inside of her.

ANAIS NIN, diary, May 25, 1932

Do not seek the because -- in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.

ANAÏS NIN, Henry and June

The monster I kill every day is the monster of realism. The monster who attacks me every day is destruction. Out of the duel comes the transformation. I turn destruction into creation over and over again.

ANAÏS NIN, Henry and June

He was jealous of her future, and she of his past.

ANAÏS NIN, Delta of Venus

I can elect something I love and absorb myself in it.

ANAÏS NIN, The Diary of Anaïs Nin

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

ANAÏS NIN, The Diary of Anaïs Nin

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

ANAÏS NIN, attributed, Investigating Subjectivity

If only I could be freed of this quest for the father. Father? Savior? God?

ANAÏS NIN, The Diary of Anaïs Nin

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

ANAÏS NIN, The Diary of Anaïs Nin

What we call our destiny is truly our character and that character can be altered. The knowledge that we are responsible for our actions and attitudes does not need to be discouraging, because it also means that we are free to change this destiny. One is not in bondage to the past, which has shaped our feelings, to race, inheritance, background. All this can be altered if we have the courage to examine how it formed us. We can alter the chemistry provided we have the courage to dissect the elements.

ANAÏS NIN, The Diary of Anaïs Nin

Electric flesh-arrows traversing the body. A rainbow of color strikes the eyelids. A foam of music falls over the ears. It is the gong of the orgasm.

ANAIS NIN, attributed, French Writers of the Past

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