I believe that most things worth knowing about life can be learned from the sixteen volumes of diaries that Anaïs Nin (February 21, 1903–January 14, 1977) began keeping at the age of eleven and continued until she died at seventy-four — things that have to do with why emotional excess is essential to creativity, why inviting the unknown helps us live more richly, how our objects define us, personal responsibility, the elusive nature of joy, writing, and the meaning of life.

But most enchanting of all are the timeless insights on love and life that Nin — a woman who made her own rules for living as expansively as possible in a society that kept trying to contain her — spilled into the pages of her diaries. Over the past couple of years, those have come to life in a series of collaborations from the Brain Pickings artist series, as I’ve asked artists and illustrators to capture some of my favorite highlights from years of reading Nin’s diaries.

Writer, artist, and frequent collaborator Debbie Millman created a duo of hand-lettered typographic artworks based on Nin’s meditations on love. Both are available as prints here and here, with 100% of proceeds benefiting A Room of Her Own, a foundation supporting women writers and artists.

San-Francisco-based illustrator Lisa Congdon created a trio of black-and-white hand-lettered artworks based on my highlights from the third volume of Nin’s diaries.

In fact, out of this series sprang my yearlong collaboration with Lisa, highlighting women who changed our understanding of the world, which kicked off with Nin:

Explore more of Nin’s wisdom in the archive, including a recording of her reading from the famous diaries, then treat yourself to the recently released Mirages: The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin, 1939–1947 (public library).