Quotes by Anaïs Nin

You are that to me, an oasis. You drug me and at the same time you give me strength.

In this instant of danger they realized they were each others reason for living, and into this instant they threw their whole being.

So many broken promises, each day an aborted wish, a lost object, a misplaced unread book, cluttering the room like an attic with discarded possessions.

Every word spoken in the past accumulated forms and colors in the self. What flows through the veins besides blood is the distillation of every act committed, the sediment of all the visions, wishes, dreams and experiences. All the past emotions converge to tint the skin and flavor the lips, to regulate the pulse and produce crystals in the eyes.

And it is that which draws me to you, too, for you are the tropics, you have the sun in you, and the softness and the clarity...

The magic beauty of simultaneity, to see the loved one rushing toward you at the same moment you are rushing toward him, the magic power of meeting, exactly at midnight to achieve union, the illusion of one common rhythm achieved by overcoming obstacles, deserting friends, breaking other bonds - all this was soon dissolved by his laziness, by his habit of missing every moment, of never keeping his word, of living perversely in a state of chaos, of swimming more naturally in a sea of failed intentions, broken promises, and aborted wishes

His entire body was pleading for reassurance, and if her whole love was not enough what else could she give him to cure his doubt?

No man and woman know what will be born in the darkness of their intermingling; so much besides children, so many invisible births, exchanges of soul and character, blossoming of unknown selves, liberation of hidden treasures, buried fantasies...

The potion drunk by lovers is prepared by no one but themselves. The potion is the sum of ones whole existence.

Every lover could be brought to trial as the murderer of his own love. When something hurts you, saddens you, I rush to avoid it, to alter it, to feel as you do, but you turn away with a gesture of impatience and say: I dont understand

The fascination exerted by one human being over another is not what he emits of his personality at the present instant of encounter but a summation of his entire being which gives off this powerful drug capturing the fancy and attachment.

Her presence had awakened in him a man suddenly whipped by his earlier ideals, whose lost manhood wanted to assert itself in action.

They had reached a perfect moment of human love. They had created a moment of perfect understanding and accord. This highest moment would now remain as point of comparison to torment them later on when all natural imperfections would disintegrate it.

These rituals Rango could not sustain, for he could not maintain the effort to arrive on time since his lifelong habit had created the opposite habit: to elude, to avoid, to disappoint every expectation of others, every commitment, every promise, every crystallization.

Paul, Paul, this is the claim you never made, the fervor you never showed. You were so cool and light, so elusive, and I never felt you encircling me and claiming possession. Rango is saying all the words I wanted to hear you say. You never came close to me, even while taking me. You took me as men take foreign women in distant countries whose language they cannot speak. You took me in silence and strangeness.

Ali Baba protects the lovers! Gives them the luck of bandits, and no guilt, for love fills certain people and expands them beyond all laws; there is no time, no place for regrets, hesitations, cowardices. Love runs free and reckless, and all the gentle trickeries perpetrated to protect others from its burns-those who are not the lovers but who might be the victims of this loves expansion.

Now, his hair is white and he no longer understands anyones need to love, for he has lost everything, not to love, but to his games of love; and when you love as a game, you lose everything, as he lost his home and wife, and now he clings to me, afraid of loss, afraid of solitude.

I am sure you would not understand if I told you my father is delightfully clear and selfish, tender and lying, formal and incurable. He exhausts all the loves given to him. If I did not leave his house at night to warm myself in Rangos burning hands I would die at my task, arid and barren, sapless, while my father monologues about his past, and I yawn yawn yawn...

No moment of charm without long roots in the past, no moment of charm is born on bare soil, a careless accident of beauty, but is the sum of great sorrows, growths, and efforts.

But love, the great narcotic, was the hothouse in which all the selves burst into their fullest bloom...