I don't tell the truth anymore to those who can't make use of it. I tell it mostly to myself because it always changes me.

— Anais Nin

I postpone death by living by suffering by error by risking by giving by losing.

— Anais Nin

I stopped loving my father a long time ago. What remained was the slavery to a pattern.

— Anais Nin

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene and as if by magic we see a new meaning in it.

— Anais Nin

It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.

— Anais Nin

I was thinking of my patients and how the worst moment for them was when they discovered they were masters of bad or good luck. When they could no longer blame fate they were in despair.

— Anais Nin

I will not be just a tourist in the world of images just watching images passing by which I cannot live in make love to possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.

— Anais 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 naive or innocent, who has the courage to treat me like a woman.

— Anais Nin

Life is truly known only to those who suffer, lose, endure adversity and stumble from defeat to defeat.

— Anais Nin

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage.

— Anais Nin