Anaïs Nin

“אנו כותבים כדי לטעום את החיים פעמיים: ברגע ההתרחשות ובמבט לאחור.”

“יש דרכים רבות להיות חופשי. אחת מהן היא לתת לדמיון לגבור על המציאות.”

“כל חבר מייצג משהו בעצמנו, שאולי נולד רק כשפגשנו בו.”

“אני אישה באופן כה מוחלט שאני מבינה את אבא שלי כבן אדם.”

“אנו נודדים, לעתים לתמיד, כדי למצוא מדינות אחרות, חיים אחרים, נפשות אחרות.”

“איננו רואים את הדברים כפי שהם, אנו רואים את פני הדברים כמו שאנחנו.”

“החיים מתכווצים או מתרחבים בהתאם לאומץ האדם.”

“אינך יכול להציל אנשים, אתה יכול רק לאהוב אותם.”

“חלומות הכרחיים לחיים.”

“The writer is the duelist who never fights at the stated hour, who gathers up an insult, like another curious object, a collector's item, spreads it out on his desk later, and then engages in a duel with it verbally. Some people call it weakness. I call it postponement. What is weakness in the man becomes a quality in the writer. For he preserves, collects what will explode later in his work. That is why the writer is the loneliest man in the world; because he lives, fights, dies, is reborn always alone; all his roles are played behind a curtain. In life he is an incongruous figure.”

“They clutch and cling and howl when I leave them, but how badly they love.”

“There are two ways to reach me: by way of kisses or by way of the imagination. But there is a hierarchy: the kisses alone don't work.”

“Out of worship and out of love he would let no one light the stove for her either, as if he would be the warmth and the fire to dry and warm her feet.”

“A big enough artist, I say, can eat anything, must eat everything and then alchemize it. Only the feeble writer is afraid of expansion.”

“This great handsomeness I took into myself later when he desired me, but I took it as one breathes air, or swallows a snowflake, or yields to the sun.”

“She was sewing together the little proofs of his devotion out of which to make a garment for her tattered love and faith. He cut into the faith with negligent scissors, and she mended and sewed and rewove and patched. He wasted, and threw away, and could not evaluate or preserve, or contain, or keep his treasures. Like his ever torn pockets, everything slipped through and was lost, as he lost gifts, mementos--all the objects from the past. She sewed his pockets that he might keep some of their days together, hold together the key to the house, to their room, to their bed. She sewed the sleeve so he could reach out his arm and hold her, when loneliness dissolved her. She sewed the lining so that the warmth would not seep out of their days together, the soft inner skin of their relationship.”

“The important task of literature is to free man, not to censor him, and that is why Puritanism was the most destructive and evil force which ever oppressed people and their literature: it created hypocrisy, perversion, fears, sterility.”

“Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are.”

“Someone told me the delightful story of the crusader who put a chastity belt on his wife and gave the key to his best friend for safekeeping, in case of his death. He had ridden only a few miles away when his friend, riding hard, caught up with him, saying 'You gave me the wrong key!”

“Before, as soon as I came home from all sorts of places I would sit down and write in my journal. Now I want to write you, talk with you... I love when you say all that happens is good, it is good. I say all that happens is wonderful. For me it is all symphonic, and I am so aroused by living - god, Henry, in you alone I have found the same swelling of enthusiasm, the same quick rising of the blood, the fullness... Before, I almost used to think there was something wrong. Everybody else seemed to have the brakes on... I never feel the brakes. I overflow. And when I feel your excitement about life flaring, next to mine, then it makes me dizzy.”