(1903–1977)
French-born U.S. writer and diarist
Anaïs Nin
I put my faith in therapy as others do in religion, or philosophy.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol 7, 1966–1974) (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 175.
When you allow yourself to be negative, you add to the burdens of the world.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol 7, 1966–1974) (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 148.
Books are the greatest companions, confessors, confidantes, tutors, a source of pleasure, a cure for loneliness, and to find one, in the middle of an island in Tahiti, in the heart of the Moroccan desert, or at an airport where one is stranded for a night, is to find the friend who reminds us we are not alone.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol 7, 1966–1974) (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 104.
She refused to sleep in the same bed with a dead love, the skeleton of a passion.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol 7, 1966–1974) (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 82.
In New York at the end of the day I play ostrich. I take a glass of beer or wine or a pill and go to sleep to have energy for the next day.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol 7, 1966–1974) (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 53.
The abstract beauty of Japanese art issues from the abstract beauty of their lives. They do not like clutter. They like to look at one flower at a time, one painting, one pot. They have a storage house for the objects of art which are not being displayed.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol 7, 1966–1974) (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 22.
Only the Japanese would think of serving red watermelon in a green plate.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol 7, 1966–1974) (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 20.
The gardens [in Japan] are works of art in design, planting and miniaturization. The Japanese favor green gardens, not flowers which die, but evergreens, carpets of moss. Always, the accompaniment of water from a stream directed to fall drop by drop from a bamboo pipe. Each time it stops to allow the water to accumulate, it makes a sound like one dry slap on a drum.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol 7, 1966–1974) (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 15.
His mind makes immense detours. Then he gets lost. And then I am able to bring him back, not because I know any more than he does, or because I am more whole, but because I have a sense of direction in the world of ideas.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin [Vol. 1 1931–1934] (New York: The Swallow Press, 1966), 158.
If psychoanalysis is going to divest me of all decoration, costume, adornment, flavor, characteristic, then what will be left?
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol. 1 1931–1934) (New York: The Swallow Press, 1966), 119.
Ultimately I look upon writing as wings. We are pedestrians, we walk along the earth; we may love the earth, but the moment of absolute magic is when our imagination allows us to take flights into vaster, more entrancing worlds.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin (Vol 7, 1966–1974) (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 85.
This struggle to live by my own truth is so difficult, so wearing. A terrible algebra, always.
The Diary of Anaïs Nin Vol. 1 1931–1934 (New York: The Swallow Press, 1966), 359.