I am attracted by unconventionality.

— Anaïs Nin

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Please do not mistake sensitivity for weakness.

— Anaïs Nin

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

— Anaïs Nin

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We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit, and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them.

— Anaïs Nin

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

— Anaïs Nin

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We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

— Anaïs Nin

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You live out the confusions until they become clear.

— Anaïs Nin

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If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is compromise.

— Anaïs Nin

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Ordinary life does not interest me.

— Anaïs Nin

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I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn't impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.

— Anaïs Nin

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