Anaïs Nin

There are only two kinds of freedom in the world; the freedom of the rich and powerful, and the freedom of the artist and the monk . . .

Every word you wrote I ate, as if it were manna. Finding one’s self in a book is a second birth; and you are the only one who knows that at times men behave like women and women like men, and that all these distinctions are mock distinctions.

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.

Had I not created my whole world, I would certainly have died in other people’s.

When you make a world tolerable for yourself, you make a world tolerable for others.

We are going to the moon that is not very far. Man has so much farther to go within himself.

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.

You have a right to experiment with your life. You will make mistakes. And they are right too. No, I think there was too rigid a pattern. You came out of an education and are supposed to know your vocation. Your vocation is fixed, and maybe ten years later you find you are not a teacher anymore or you’re not a painter anymore. It may happen. It has happened. I mean Gauguin decided at a certain point he wasn’t a banker anymore; he was a painter. And so he walked away from banking. I think we have a right to change course. But society is the one that keeps demanding that we fit in and not disturb things. They would like you to fit in right away so that things work now.

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.

People living deeply have no fear of death.