Anais Nin Self Quotations

Eroticism is one of the basic means of self-knowledge, as indispensable as poetry.

We do not escape into philosophy, psychology, and art--we go there to restore our shattered selves into whole ones.

She lacks confidence, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself.

"We see the world as 'we' are, not as 'it' is; because it is the "I" behind the 'eye' that does the seeing."

We love best those who are, or act for us, a self we do not wish to be or act out.

There were always in me, two women at least, one woman desperate and bewildered, who felt she was drowning and another who would leap into a scene, as upon a stage, conceal her true emotions because they were weaknesses, helplessness, despair, and present to the world only a smile, an eagerness, curiosity, enthusiasm, interest.

Art is the method of levitation, in order to separate one's self from enslavement by the earth.

The self is merely the lens through which we see others and the world ...

Balance is not to be sought by association with others; it must exist within one's self.

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.

Worlds self made are so full of monsters and demons.

destruction is ultimately self-destruction.

People who want a sane, static, measurable world take the first aspect of an event or person and stick to it, with an almost self-protective obstinacy, or by a natural limitation of their imaginations. They do not indulge in either deepening or magnifying.

Self-destructive patterns cause as much suffering as outer catastrophes.

jazz is the expression of America's romantic self, its sensual potency, its lyrical force.

No one should be forced to carry the unfulfilled self of another.

One always, sooner or later, comes upon a city which is an image of one's inner cities. Fez is an image of my inner self. ... The layers of the city of Fez are like the layers and secrecies of the inner life. One needs a guide. ... There were in Fez, as in my life, streets which led nowhere, impasses which remained a mystery.

She had lost herself somewhere along the frontier between her inventions, her stories, her fantasies and her true self. The boundaries had become effaced, the tracks lost, she had walked into pure chaos, and not a chaos which carried her like the galloping of romantic riders in operas and legends, but which suddenly revealed the stage props: a papier-mâché horse.

My life is not possible to tell. I change every day, change my patterns, my concepts, my interpretations. I am a series of moods and sensations. I play a thousand roles. I weep when I find others play them for me. My real self is unknown. My work is merely an essence of this vast and deep adventure.

We are all engaged in the task of peeling off the false selves, the programmed selves, the selves created by our families, our culture, our religions. It is an enormous task because the history of women has been as incompletely told as the history of blacks.

I sat there for three hours and did not feel the time or the boredom of our talk and its foolish disconnection. As long as I could hear his voice, I was quite lost, quite blind, quite outside my own self.