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Anais Nin

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“We also write to heighten our own awareness of life... We write to taste life twice, in the moment, and in retrospection... We write to be able to transcend our life, to reach beyond it...to teach ourselves to speak with others, to record the journey into the labyrinth. We write to expand our world when we feel strangled, or constricted, or lonely... When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking... I feel I lose my fire and my color.”

WorldFeelsWritingMomentsAbleSpeakLosesTeachRecordsFireOur LivesJourneyAwarenessColorTasteLonelyOur WorldLabyrinthShrinkingAwareness Of Life
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“It amazes me that you feel that each time you write a story you give away one of your dreams and you feel the poorer for it. But then you have not thought that this dream is planted in others, others begin to live it too, it is shared, it is the beginning of friendship and love. How is this world made which you enjoy, the friends around me that you love? They came because I first gave away my stories.”

WorldGivingFeelsWritingFirstsMadeStoriesDreamEnjoyThis WorldAnd LoveYour DreamsLove And Friendship
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“Again I take a taxi to Clichy address, but feel that I do not want to go on loving Henry more actively than he loves me (having realized that nobody will ever love me in that overabundant, overexpressive, overthoughtful, overhuman way I love people), and so I will wait for him. So I ask taxi driver to drop me at the Galeries Lafayette, where I begin to look for a new hat and to shop for Christmas. Pride? I don't know. A kind of wise retreat. I need people too much. So I bury my gigantic defect, my overflow of love, under trivialities, like a child. I amuse myself with a new hat.”

PeopleKnowsWayWantNeedsFeelsLooksKindChildrenAsksWaitingToo MuchWisePrideGoes OnShopsHatsAddressesDriversRetreatDefectsTaxiOverflowTrivialityWait For HimLafayette
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“Ordinary life does not interest me. I seek only the high moments. I am in accord with the surrealists, searching for the marvelous. I want to be a writer who reminds others that these moments exist; I want to prove that there is infinite space, infinite meaning, infinite dimension. But I am not always in what I call a state of grace. I have days of illuminations and fevers. I have days when the music in my head stops. Then I mend socks, prune trees, can fruits, polish furniture. But while I am doing this I feel I am not living.”

WantFeelsDoeStatesMomentsInterestSpaceGraceTreeProveOrdinaryInfiniteFruitDimensionsMarvelousFurniturePolishAccordFeverIlluminationSockOrdinary LifeSurrealistPrunesInfinite Space
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“The city was asleep on its right side and shaking with violent nightmares. Long puffs of snoring came out of the chimneys. Its feet were sticking out because the clouds did not cover it altogether. There was a hole in them and the white feathers were falling out. The city had untied all its bridges like so many buttons to feel at ease. Wherever there was a lamplight the city scratched itself until it went out.”

FeelsLongFallSidesWhiteCitiesFeetCloudsViolentHolesBridgesEaseNightmareButtonsFeathersShakingPuffChimneysSnoringSticking Out
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“The theme of the diary is always the personal, but it does not mean only a personal story: it means a personal relationship to all things and people. The personal, if it is deep enough, becomes universal, mythical, symbolic; I never generalize, intellectualise. I see, I hear, I feel. These are my primitive elements of discovery. Music, dance, poetry and painting are the channels for emotion. It is through them that experience penetrates our bloodstream.”

PeopleIfsFeelsMeanDoeEnoughStoriesEmotionPaintingElementsDiscoveryAll ThingsUniversalThemePrimitiveDiariesPenetrateSymbolicPersonal RelationshipsPersonal Stories
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“Why do I doubt her? Perhaps she is just very sensitive, and hypersensitive people are false when others doubt them; they waver. And one thinks them insincere. Yet I want to believe her. At the same time it does not seem so very important that she should love me. It is not her role. I am so filled with my love of her. And at the same time I feel that I am dying. Our love would be death. The embrace of imaginings.”

PeopleThinkingWantFeelsShouldBelieveDoeImportantSeemsWould BeRolesDoubtDyingFilledEmbraceSensitiveOur LoveInsincere
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