Regular readers of my blog will know that I am something of a collector of quotations. I keep a notebook at hand and jot down any that strike a chord with me – lines from poems, proverbs, axioms, even just a comment made by somebody or other in an interview or overheard in a café.

Over the years, more and more notebooks have been added to the shelf, and as I was leafing through pages the other day, it struck me that one name appears over and over: Anaïs Nin.

In case you are not familiar with her life and work, I will give you a brief overview. Anaïs was born in 1903, the daughter of a composer and a classical singer. Until her forties, she lived in Spain, Cuba and France (Paris), before moving to the United States. Anaïs had a fierce intellect, a great curiosity about life and our individual experiences, and a wonderful way with words. She wrote everything from essays to journals to books; she was a ground-breaking writer in the genre of erotica and in feminist thinking.

Anaïs died, sadly, in her seventies, but she left behind a great legacy in the words she had committed to paper. She was a lady who believed in both the big questions and the little ones, in digging deep and seeking meaning, in telling truths and growing in oneself (her keen interest in psychoanalysis particularly fuelled her truth-finding).

Over the years, I have found much affinity with quotations from the works of Anaïs, not only in my writing and in the romances that I weave on paper, but in my travels, in myself, in life. Today, I would like to share with you some of my favourite Anaïs Nin quotations. I hope you may find these as insightful and inspiring as I do.