This one is real. The line is a diary entry from The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume One: 1931–1934, the first volume of her journals, edited by Gunther Stuhlmann and first published in 1966. Wikiquote’s sourced diary section dates the entry to March 1933 and cites it to that volume.
“I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing” Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume One: 1931–1934 (published 1966), entry dated March 1933. Verified at quotle.info
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In context
Evoking the world of Anaïs Nin — French-born American diarist, essayist & novelist. Theme: "I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The source
Work
The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume One: 1931–1934
Entry dated
March 1933 — as dated in Wikiquote’s sourced diary section
First published
1966 · Harcourt, Brace & World / The Swallow Press; edited by Gunther Stuhlmann
Edition note
The 1960s–70s diary volumes were only retroactively called “expurgated”; fuller unexpurgated editions of these years appeared from 1986.
I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing… The romantic submits to life, the classicist dominates it.
Diary, Volume One · March 1933
The popular version stops at “by losing.” The continuation shown here is the fuller form in which readers of Volume One reproduce the passage — reported rather than confirmed against the printed page, since the volume is in copyright and not openly full-text searchable.
Start with the specialists. Quote Investigator has no article on this line, but Wikiquote’s Anaïs Nin page ↗ does — and it places the quote in its sourced “Diary entries (1914–1974)” section, dated March 1933, with a page-anchored citation to the first volume of her diaries on Google Books.
Check what that citation points at. The cited volume resolves to The Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1931–1934 ↗ — the first volume of the journals, edited by Gunther Stuhlmann, in the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt edition. March 1933 falls squarely inside the years it covers.
Date the book.Wikipedia ↗ confirms Volume I was first published in 1966, and that the more complete unexpurgated versions only began appearing in 1986 under Rupert Pole. That 1966 date is what decides the copyright question below.
Note where it isn’t. Nin’s Wikiquote page keeps a well-tended Disputed list — the bud/blossom line, “we see things as we are,” “shame is the lie someone told you about yourself.” This quote is not among them. With an author this heavily faked, absence from that list is itself evidence.
In copyright — not public domain. Attribution and rights are separate questions, and this line is firmly Nin’s while still being firmly protected: the work containing it, The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume One, was first published in 1966 ↗, well after the 1931 US public-domain cutoff, and Nin herself died in 1977. Rights are administered by her estate — Rupert Pole served as her literary executor and the Anaïs Nin Foundation now manages her literary legacy ↗ — with the US diaries published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Brief quotation with attribution is ordinary fair use; reproducing the passage at length requires permission.
Fact-check
Real quote, unreliable neighbourhood
This line is not a fake — but Anaïs Nin’s name is one of the internet’s great fake-quote magnets, and even her genuine lines get passed around in damaged condition. Three things worth knowing before you repeat it.
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Sourceless circulationQuote aggregators No source given
The line is everywhere with Nin’s name on it and no book attached. Goodreads ↗ reproduces it with no source work credited — and notes that its quotes are added by users and not verified. That a quote is genuine and that a site can prove it are two different things.
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The wordingSocial media Truncated
The line almost always stops at “by losing.” In its fuller circulating form it runs on: “… The romantic submits to life, the classicist dominates it.” The ellipsis is doing quiet work — it removes the sentence that tells you what the list was for.
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The company it keepsElizabeth Appell Not Nin
The most famous “Nin” quote of all — “the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom” — is not hers. Wikiquote ↗ records that it is credited to Nin without a documented source in her work, and that in March 2013 Elizabeth Appell claimed she wrote it in 1979 for a college class-schedule header.
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Also not hers“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are” Nin quoting others
Frequently posted as pure Nin. But as Wikiquote ↗ documents, her novel Seduction of the Minotaur presents it as something remembered — “Lillian was reminded of the talmudic words” — i.e. Nin was citing, not coining.
✓The verdict on this one: genuine. Wikiquote’s sourced diary section ↗ places it in The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume One: 1931–1934 as an entry dated March 1933 — pointedly not in the Disputed section where her famous fakes live. Quote it freely; just consider restoring the second half.
Context
A diary, not an aphorism
Read as a poster, the line sounds like a dare — go take risks. Read where it actually sits, in a 1933 diary entry by a woman in her late twenties in Paris, it is doing something stranger and more private. Nin is not recommending suffering and error and loss to anyone. She is counting them. Living, suffering, erring, risking, giving, losing — six things, and every one of them a cost. The argument is that paying those costs is what keeps you from being dead already.
That is why the second clause matters, and why its disappearance is a real loss. In the fuller form the thought continues: “The romantic submits to life, the classicist dominates it.” The list of losses was never a standalone motto — it was Nin working out a position, on the page, about which of those two she was. The internet kept the part that fits on an image and threw away the part that explains it.
She is not recommending suffering. She is counting it.
Why the diary itself is a complicated document
The Diary that made Nin famous is not a raw transcript. When the first volume appeared in 1966 it presented a shaped, selective version of her journals; only later, once fuller editions existed, did readers retroactively start calling those 1960s and 1970s volumes the expurgated ones.
Beginning in 1986, Rupert Pole — Nin’s second husband and literary executor — released the more sexually frank unexpurgated versions covering the same years. So a line from Volume One is genuinely Nin’s published diary; it is simply worth knowing that “her diary” names a curated book, not an unmediated one.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
1903–1977 · French-born American diarist, essayist & novelist
Born in Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1903 and dead in Los Angeles in 1977, Anaïs Nin kept a journal from the age of eleven until the end of her life — an act of sustained self-documentation that eventually ran to many thousands of pages. She was a novelist and essayist too, and later a writer of erotica, but it is the diary that made her: when the first volume appeared in 1966, it turned a private habit into a public literary event. Volume One covers 1931–1934, the Paris years, when she was in her late twenties and moving among writers including Henry Miller. After her death her second husband Rupert Pole, her literary executor, commissioned the fuller unexpurgated editions; the Anaïs Nin Foundation now manages her literary legacy.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source — Chicago
Nin, Anaïs. The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume One: 1931–1934. Edited and with an introduction by Gunther Stuhlmann. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World / The Swallow Press, 1966. Entry dated March 1933 (as dated in Wikiquote’s sourced diary section).
MLA (9th ed.)
Nin, Anaïs. The Diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume One: 1931–1934. Edited by Gunther Stuhlmann, Harcourt, Brace & World / The Swallow Press, 1966.
APA (7th ed.)
Nin, A. (1966). The diary of Anaïs Nin, Volume one: 1931–1934 (G. Stuhlmann, Ed.). Harcourt, Brace & World / The Swallow Press.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘I postpone death by living, by suffering, by error, by risking, by giving, by losing’?” Last verified 15 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/i-postpone-death-by-living-by-suffering-by-error-by-risking