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
love flower heart
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.
flower paris white
When I stand at the top of the Champs-Elysées, with its chestnut trees in flower, its undulations of shining cars, its white spaciousness, I feel as if I were biting into a utopian fruit, something velvety and lustrous and rich and vivid.
artist flow currents
Most artists have retired too absolutely; they grow rusty, inflexible to the flow of currents.
flower sunset blood
Acapulco in the sunset seems like a balm; it enters the blood like a drug after one inhalation of the scent of flowers, one glimpse of the bay iridescent like silk, the sunset like the inside of a shell, so much like the flesh of Venus.
heart blood ebb-and-flow
What a mystery this is, desire. The love sickness, the sensitivity, the obsession, the flutter of the heart, the ebb and flow of the blood. There is no drug and no alcohol to equal it.
american-author birth born friend meeting possibly represents until
Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.
absence appears awakens becomes believe dangerous degenerate delicate die discover drive easily innocuous knowing might millions picnic raise saves second shock symptoms takes talk treatment work
You live like this, sheltered, in a delicate world, and you believe you are living. Then you read a book(Lady Chatterley, for instance), or you take a trip, or you talk with Richard, and you discover that you are not living, that you are hibernating. The symptoms of hibernating are easily detectable: first, restlessness. The second symptom(when hibernating becomes dangerous and might degenerate into death): absence of pleasure. That is all. It appears like an innocuous illness. Monotony, boredom, death. Millions live like this(or die like this) without knowing it. They work in offices. They drive a car. They picnic with their families. They raise children. And then some shock treatment takes place, a person, a book, a song, and it awakens them and saves them from death.
change changes continue evolve learn living mind psyche reflect throw
To change skins, evolve into new cycles, I feel one has to learn to discard. If one changes internally, one should not continue to live with the same objects. They reflect one's mind and the psyche of yesterday. I throw away what has no dynamic, living use.
american-author bud came painful remain risk tight time took
There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
We see not what is, but what we are.
break bud came courage inside painful places push remain risk takes test tight took
It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before... to test your limits... to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
life moment taste
We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospection
happiness fall rain
What can I do with my happiness? How can I keep it, conceal it, bury it where I may never lose it? I want to kneel as it falls over me like rain, gather it up with lace and silk, and press it over myself again.
character men secret
Also, I do not like the companionship of women. They are petty and personal. They hang on to their mysteries and secrets, they act and pretend. I like the character of men better.