"Life is so changeable that we can only hope that we have succeeded at least once in enjoying a fresh and pure moment of pleasure without destroying it."
The life of a French writer Anaïs Nin, which was born in 1903 in the suburbs of Paris, was truly specific, filled with many controversies and intrigues. What's interesting about her is that she is more like 60 years of writing her diaries (from the age of eleven until his death) and published them, without censorship.
In fact, her life was uncensored! In addition to the diary, she is also known for erotic novels and short stories, bohemian life in polygamy and many lovers, including writer Henry Miller and psychoanalyst Otto Rank. She died in Los Angeles in 1977 after a three-year battle with cancer.
Considering her turbulent and free-spirited life, it is not surprising that Anaïs Nin's most famous quotes have primarily a love connotation. Because of their interpretation, for example with the famous "...I will always be a virgin-prostitute, a perverted angel, a two-faced woman, a mortal saint" – Anaïs became the muse of feminists and adored in homosexual circles. However, in the sea of her erotic prose, one forgets the fact that Anaïs devoted a large part of her life study of psychoanalysis, and that she wrote numerous essays and filled the pages of her journals with reflections on freedom and free, unrestricted artistic creation.
Today we present to you some of her lesser-known quotes.
"We write to feel life twice - in the given moment and in retrospect."
"There will come a day when the risk of being trapped in our own cocoon becomes greater than the risk of flourishing."
"I experience life lyrically, melodically - my feelings are stronger than reasons and principles. I long for the miraculous, and this desire is the only thing that can overwhelm me. Anything I can't turn into something miraculous, I just let go. Reality doesn't excite me. I believe in ecstasy, freedom, and when life shakes me, I run away - anywhere. There are no more walls.”
"We do not develop chronologically. Sometimes we develop in one dimension, and sometimes in another – unevenly. We are relative. In one respect we are mature, in another we are childish. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations. Isn't that wonderful?”
"The role of the writer is not to say what everyone else can, but what no one else can or should."
"If you don't breathe through writing, if you don't cry through writing, if you don't sing through writing, then don't write. The culture has no benefit from this.”
"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states that we have to go through. People make a mistake when they want to choose a state in which they will stay forever. In this way, they cause death to themselves.”
"Man strives to recognize only what he knows. So the function of art is to change our perception. The task of the writer is to stir up familiar scenes so magically that we suddenly see a new meaning in them."
"I believe that a person writes with the intention of creating a world for himself in which he can live."
"He was unknown my compass The unknown was my encyclopedia. The unknown was and remains my only science.”
"People who live life to the fullest do not fear death."
"The last lesson any writer learns is that everything can feed and inspire him. A dictionary, a newly discovered word, a trip, a meeting, a conversation on the street, a book, a new learned phrase – absolutely everything.”
"Dealing with art is a kind of floating - separating one's own being from being trapped on earth."
"A creative person will never stay in the first world he discovers. It knows no boundaries and obeys nothing.”
"Life is so changeable that we can only hope that we have succeeded at least once in enjoying a fresh and pure moment of pleasure without destroying it."
