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.

writing perception art familiar seeing

About Anaïs Nin

Portrait of Anaïs Nin

Angela Anaïs Juana Antolina Rosa Edelmira Nin y Culmell ( AN-eye-EESS NEEN; French: [ana.is nin]; February 21, 1903 – January 14, 1977) was a French-born American diarist, essayist, novelist, and writer of short stories and erotica. Born to Cuban parents in France, Nin was the daughter of the composer Joaquín...

More quotations from Anaïs Nin

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

Dreams are necessary to life.

Do not seek the because—in love there is no because, no reason, no explanation, no solutions.

love explanation

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.

The only abnormality is the incapacity to love.

More quotations tagged with “seeing”

Stained glass, engraved glass, frosted glass; give me plain glass.

—Aldous Huxley in Island

You don't take a photograph, you make it.

creation art seeing photographs

The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing.

—Pierre Bonnard

perception seeing naming uniqueness

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

imagination vision art seeing

When you're too close to people, when you spend too much time with them and love them too dearly, sometimes you can't see them.

—Tana French in The Likeness

love time people perception seeing distance

History

7 Apr 2013 Added