“Why one writes is a question I can answer easily, having so often asked it myself. 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 where I could breathe, reign, and recreate myself when destroyed by living. That, I believe, is the reason for every work of art. We also write to heighten our awareness of life. We write to lure, enchant, and to console others. We write to serenade. We write to taste life twice, once in the moment and once in retrospection. We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it. We write to teach ourselves to speak to others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled or restricted or lonely.” WorldLifeTeachAwarenessWriterCreate Author:Anaïs Nin
“What unites us universally is our emotions, our feelings in the face of experience, and not necessarily the actual experiences themselves.” PeopleLifeHumanity Book:In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays Source: In Favor of the Sensitive Man and Other Essays
“We are more severe judges of our own acts... We judge our thoughts, our intents, our secret curses, our secret hates, not only our acts.” LifeSelfTruthThoughtsReflectionJudgementActionsSevereActs Book:A Spy in the House of Love Source: A Spy in the House of Love
“In our twenties we have conflicts. We think everything is either-or, black or white: we are caught between them and we lose all our energy in the conflicts. My answer, later on in maturity, was to do them all. Not to exclude any, not to make a choice. I wanted to be everything. And I took everything in, and the more you take in, the more strength you find waiting to accomplish things and to expand your life, instead of the other (which is what we have been taught to do) which is to look for structure and to fear change, above all to fear change. Now I didn't fear change.” LifeMotivationChange Book:A Woman Speaks: The Lectures, Seminars and Interviews of Anaïs Nin Source: A Woman Speaks: The Lectures, Seminars and Interviews of Anaïs Nin
“You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you're not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn't a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now.” LifeGrowthChangeEducationExperimentsMistakesVocationSocial Norms Author:Anaïs Nin