Anais Nin
Anais Nin
Anaïs Ninwas an essayist and memoirist born to Cuban parents in France, where she was also raised. She spent some time in Spain and Cuba but lived most of her life in the United States where she became an established author. She wrote journals, novels, critical studies, essays, short stories, and erotica. A great deal of her work, including Delta of Venus and Little Birds, was published posthumously...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth21 February 1903
CityNanterre, France
CountryUnited States of America
I am a failure as a writer. The publishers won't publish me, the bookshops won't carry my books, the critics won't write about me. I am excluded from all anthologies, and completely ignored.
Descendants of pigeons once fed by Keats, Byron, George Sand, Chopin and many other famous lovers are still being fed, and the sudden sound when they all rise together, frightened away, is like the sound of giant sails flapping.
If you are terribly truthful, the ground will always move from under you, and you will have to shift with the constantly shifting truth.
One may gain one truth at the expense of another.
Travel is seeking the lost paradise. It is the supreme illusion of love.
I like extravagance. Letters which give the postman a stiff back to carry, books which overflow from their covers, sexuality which bursts the thermometers.
One always, sooner or later, comes upon a city which is an image of one's inner cities. Fez is an image of my inner self. ... The layers of the city of Fez are like the layers and secrecies of the inner life. One needs a guide. ... There were in Fez, as in my life, streets which led nowhere, impasses which remained a mystery.
Life, religion and art all converge in Bali. They have no word in their language for 'artist' or 'art.' Everyone is an artist.
No one should be forced to carry the unfulfilled self of another.
Mature people relate to each other without the need to merge.
The way to recognize a dead word is that it exudes boredom.
The child who is uprooted begins to recognize that what he builds within himself is what will endure, what will withstand shattering experiences.
The shell is America's most active contribution to the formation of character. A tough hide. Grow it early.
Big Business and Politics are twins, they are the monsters who kill everything, corrupt everything.