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
Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.
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.
One handles truths like dynamite. Literature is one vast hypocrisy, a giant deception, treachery. All writers have concealed more than they revealed.
I don't tell the truth any more to those who can't make use of it. I tell it mostly to myself, because it always changes me.
The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.
One handles truths like dynamite.
When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
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.
There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
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.
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.
One discovers that destiny can be diverted, that one does not have to remain in bondage to the first wax imprint made on childhood sensibilities. Once the deforming mirror has been smashed, there is a possibility of wholeness. There is a possibility of joy.
I see enormous loves growing immense and finally crushing me.