“Perhaps too much value is assigned to memory, not enough to thinking. Remembering is an ethical act, has ethical value in and of itself. Memory is, achingly, the only relation we can have with the dead.”
Source: Regarding the Pain of Others
“It is a view of suffering, of the pain of others, that is rooted in religious thinking, which links pain to sacrifice, sacrifice to exaltation - a view that could not be more alien to a modern sensibility, which regards suffering as something that is a mistake or an accident or a crime. Something to be fixed. Something to be refused. Something that makes one feel powerless.”
Source: Regarding the Pain of Others
“When things do not seem easy, do not quit on your vision because if you quit, the enemy wins. Stay devoted to your vision so you can experience true victory.”
Source: A Manual for Victory
“Men from the mountains always dream of the sea, and above all things I love to travel.”
Source: The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel
“What is odd is not that so many of the iconic news photos of the past, including some of the best-remembered pictures from the Second World War, appear to have been staged. It is that we are surprised to learn they were staged and always disappointed.”
Source: Regarding the Pain of Others
“To set their sufferings alongside the sufferings of another people was to compare them (which hell was worse?), demoting Sarajevo's martyrdom to a mere instance.”
Source: Regarding the Pain of Others
“Now, his hair is white and he no longer understands anyone's need to love, for he has lost everything, not to love, but to his games of love; and when you love as a game, you lose everything, as he lost his home and wife, and now he clings to me, afraid of loss, afraid of solitude.”
Source: The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel
“No privacy left. No manners.”
Source: The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel
“No moment of charm without long roots in the past, no moment of charm is born on bare soil, a careless accident of beauty, but is the sum of great sorrows, growths, and efforts.”
Source: The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel
“I am sure you would not understand if I told you my father is delightfully clear and selfish, tender and lying, formal and incurable. He exhausts all the loves given to him. If I did not leave his house at night to warm myself in Rango's burning hands I would die at my task, arid and barren, sapless, while my father monologues about his past, and I yawn yawn yawn...”
Source: The Four-Chambered Heart: V3 in Nin's Continuous Novel