The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say. – Anaïs Nin
Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death. – Anaïs Nin
Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together. – Anaïs Nin
Is devotion to others a cover for the hungers and the needs of the self, of which one is ashamed? I was always ashamed to take. So I gave. It was not virtue. It was a disguise. – Anaïs Nin
There are very few human beings who receive the truth, complete and staggering, by instant illumination. Most of them acquire it fragment by fragment, on a small scale, by successive developments, cellularly, like a laborious mosaic. – Anaïs Nin
I, with a deeper instinct, choose a man who compels my strength, who makes enormous demands on me, who does not doubt my courage or my toughness, who does not believe me naïve or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman. – Anaïs Nin
He does not need opium. He has the gift of reverie. – Anaïs Nin
I was thinking of my patients, and how the worst moment for them was when they discovered they were masters of their own fate. It was not a matter of bad or good luck. When they could no longer blame fate, they were in despair. – Anaïs Nin
The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body. – Anaïs Nin
When one is pretending the entire body revolts. – Anaïs Nin