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When I don't write, I feel my world shrinking. I feel I am in a prison. I feel I lose my fire and my color. It should be a necessity, as the sea needs to heave, and I call it breathing.

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
Call
Necessity
Write
Breathing
Feel
Prison
Feels
Sea
Needs
Color
Writing
Lose
World
Loses
Heave
Fire
Shrinking

More quotes by Anais Nin

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While analyzing so many people I realized the constant need of a mother, or a father, or a god (the same thing) is really immaturity. It is a childish need, a human need, but so universal that I can see how it gave birth to all religions.
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When I am most deeply rooted, I feel the wildest desire to uproot myself.
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I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly.
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She was fully, painfully aware that very rarely did midnight strike in two hearts at once, very rarely did midnight arouse two different equal desires, and that any dislocation in this, any indifference, was an indication of disunity, of the difficulties, the impossibilities of fusion between two human beings.
Anais Nin
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To change skins, evolve into new cycles, I feel one has to learn to discard. If one changes internally one should not continue to live with the same objects. They reflect one's mind and psyche of yesterday. I throw away what has no dynamic, living use.
Anais Nin
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I only believe in fire. Life. Fire. Being myself on fire I set others on fire. Never death. Fire and life.
Anais Nin
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America hates the artist. It will not admit: the artist is my soul and I want to kill off my soul.
Anais Nin
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I am like a snake who has already bitten. I retreat from a direct battle while knowing the slow effect of the poison.
Anais Nin
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If you can't create, you destroy.
Anais Nin
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The personal, if it is deep enough, becomes universal, mythical, symbolic.
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Creation which cannot express itself becomes madness.
Anais Nin
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What can I do with my happiness? How can I keep it, conceal it, bury it where I may never lose it? I want to kneel as it falls over me like rain, gather it up with lace and silk, and press it over myself again.
Anais Nin
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I am in great terror of your understanding by which you penetrate into my world and then I stand revealed and I have shared my kingdom with you.
Anais Nin
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I write emotional algebra.
Anais Nin
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Shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.
Anais Nin
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I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated
Anais Nin
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We are cruel when someone refuses to play the role in which we have cast him. We judge a person only according to his relationship towards us.
Anais Nin
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What everyone forgets is that passion is not merely a heightened sensual fusion but a way of life which produces, as in the mystics, an ecstatic awareness of the whole of life.
Anais Nin
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In New York the acoustics are good for laughter, for life is all external, all action, no thought, no meditation, no dreaming, no reflection, only the exuberance of action.
Anais Nin
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the best way to remember a beautiful city or a beautiful painting is to eat something while you are looking at it. The flavor really helps the image to penetrate the body. It fixes it as lacquer does a drawing.
Anais Nin