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Stories are the only enchantment possible, for when we begin to see our suffering as a story, we are saved.

Anais Nin

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Anais Nin
Age: 73 †
Born: 1903
Born: February 21
Died: 1977
Died: January 14
Author
Autobiographer
Diarist
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Neuilly
Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell
Anais Nin
Begin
Possible
Suffering
Story
Stories
Enchantment
Saved

More quotes by Anais Nin

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I have a prejudice against people with money. I have known so many, and none have escaped the corruption of power. In this I am a purist. I love people motivated by love and not by power. If you have money and power, and are motivated by love, you give it all away.
Anais Nin
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The Frenchman, by nature, is sensuous and sensitive. He has intelligence, which makes him tired of life sooner than other kinds of men. He is not athletic: he sees the futility of the pursuit of fame the climate at times depresses him.
Anais Nin
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Introspection is a devouring monster. You have to feed it with much material, much experience, many people, many places, many loves, many creations, and then it ceases feeding on you.
Anais Nin
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If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness. For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.
Anais Nin
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Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through.
Anais Nin
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If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.
Anais Nin
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When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.
Anais Nin
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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.
Anais Nin
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Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.
Anais Nin
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The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.
Anais Nin
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Three or four threads may be agitated, like telegraph wires, at the same time, and if I were to tap them all I would reveal such a mixture of innocence and duplicity, generosity and calculation, fear and courage, I cannot tell the whole truth simply because I would have to write four journals at once.
Anais Nin
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Poetry is the alchemy which teaches us to convert ordinary materials into gold.
Anais Nin
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For too many centuries women have been being muses to artists. I wanted to be the muse, I wanted to be the wife of the artist, but I was really trying to avoid the final issue — that I had to do the job myself.
Anais Nin
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But I lie. I embellish. My words are not deep enough. They disguise, they conceal. I will not rest until I have told of my descent into a sensuality which was as dark, as magnificent, as wild, as my moments of mystic creation have been dazzling, ecstatic, exalted.
Anais Nin
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Dreams pass into the reality of action. From the actions stems the dream again and this interdependence produces the highest form of living.
Anais Nin
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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!
Anais Nin
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Stations and airports are rehearsals for separations by death.
Anais Nin
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I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness.
Anais Nin
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I seek the real stuff of life. Profound drama.
Anais Nin
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The shell is America's most active contribution to the formation of character. A tough hide. Grow it early.
Anais Nin