Quote

The shell is America's most active contribution to the formation of character. A tough hide. Grow it early.

Anais Nin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Tough
Grow
Shell
Grows
Formation
America
Shells
Character
Contribution
Hide
Active
Early

More quotes by Anais Nin

Image
At sixteen, Sabina took moon baths, first of all, because everyone else took sun baths, and second, she admitted, because she had been told it was dangerous.
Anais Nin
Image
We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them.
Anais Nin
Image
To withhold from living is to die ... the more you give of yourself to life the more life nourishes you.
Anais Nin
Image
I will not be just a tourist in a world of images.
Anais Nin
Image
I only believe in fire. Life. Fire. Being myself on fire I set others on fire. Never death. Fire and life.
Anais Nin
Image
The unknown was my compass. The unknown was my encyclopedia. The unnamed was my science and progress.
Anais Nin
Image
There is a resemblance between men and women, not a contrast. When a man begins to recognize his feeling, the two unite. When men accept the sensitive side of themselves, they come alive.
Anais Nin
Image
Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life.
Anais Nin
Image
Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source.
Anais Nin
Image
I gathered poets around me and we all wrote beautiful erotica. As we were condemned to focus only on sensuality, we had violent explosions of poetry. Writing erotica became a road to sainthood rather than to debauchery.
Anais Nin
Image
I walked into my own book, seeking peace. It was night, and I made a careless movement inside the dream I turned too brusquely the corner and I bruised myself against my madness.
Anais Nin
Image
He, who had done more than any human being to draw her out of the caves of her secret, folded life, now threw her down into deeper recesses of fear and doubt. The fall was greater than she had ever known, because she had ventured so far into emotion and had abandoned herself to it.
Anais Nin
Image
For all of my patients sensuality is a giving in to 'the low side of their nature.' Puritanism is powerful and distorts their life with a total anesthesia of the senses. If you atrophy one sense, you also atrophy all the others, a sensuous and physical connection with nature, with art, with food, with other human beings.
Anais Nin
Image
I either eat too much or starve myself. Sleep for 14 hours or have insomniac nights. Fall in love very hard or hate passionately. I don't know what grey is. I never did.
Anais Nin
Image
I take pleasure in my transformations. I look quiet and consistent, but few know how many women there are in me.
Anais Nin
Image
Then at certain moments I remember one of his words and I suddenly feel the sensual woman flaring up, as if violently caressed. I say the word to myself, with joy. It is at such a moment that my true body lives.
Anais Nin
Image
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.
Anais Nin
Image
I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don't know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness. In reality those who satisfy me are those who simply allow me to live with my ''idea of them.
Anais Nin
Image
Ordinary life does not interest me.
Anais Nin
Image
I am a winged creature who is too rarely allowed to use its wings. Ecstasies do not occur often enough.
Anais Nin