Henry Miller Quotes

Biography

Type: Writer

Born: December 26, 1891

Died: June 7, 1980

Henry Valentine Miller was an American writer. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms, developing a new sort of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are "Tropic of Cancer" (1934), "Black Spring" (1936), "Tropic of Capricorn" (1939) and "The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy" (1949–59), all of which are based on his experiences in New York and Paris, and all of which were banned in the United States until 1961. He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors.

Henry Miller Full Biography

Henry Miller Quotes

Living with a whore-even the best whore in the world-isn't a bed of roses.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar.

Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race

He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.

I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul.

The world around me is dissolving leaving here and there spots of time. The world is a cancer eating itself away.

The world is not to be put in order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.

For the man in the paddock, whose duty is is to sweep up manure,
the supreme terror is the possibility of a world without horses. To
tell him that it is disgusting to spend one’s life shoveling up hot
turds is a piece of imbecility. A man can get to love shit if his
livelihood depends on it, if his happiness is involved.

Words are loneliness.

The word in your mouth is anarchy.

Up on the Brooklyn Bridge a man is standing in agony, waiting to jump, or waiting to write a poem, or waiting for the blood to leave his vessels because if he advances another foot the pain of his love will kill him.

Tomorrow is no hazardous affair, a day like any other day: tomorrow is the result of many yesterdays and comes with a potent, cumulative effect. I am tomorrow what I chose to be yesterday and the day before. It is not possible that tomorrow I may negate and nullify everything that led me to this present moment.

Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am.

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is.

Life's wildest moment-she kneels on the sidewalk. Everything else she does is lies, lies.

I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object.

Ik kwam er achter dat ik er mijn hele leven heus niet naar had verlang om te leven - als wat anderen doen tenminste leven genoemd kan worden - maar wel om mezelf te kunnen uitdrukken.

Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen.

Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything godlike about God, it is that. He dared to imagine everything

I have found God, but he is insufficient.

No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.

Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown...

He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals

Serenity is when you get above all this, when it doesn't matter what they think, say or want, but when you do as you are, and see God and Devil as one.

It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another human being, not with the mind, nor even with the heart.

Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: It comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.

We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.

To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth - I count that something of a miracle.

What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.

Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant

I want to undress you, vulgarize you a bit.

I am fucking you, Tania, so that you'll stay fucked.

And her delicacy offended. Who wants a delicate whore! Claude would even ask you to turn your face away when she squatted over the bidet. All wrong! A man, when he's burning up with passion, wants to see things; he wants to see everything, even how they make water.

[...] I know how to inflame a cunt. I shoot hot bolts into you, Tania. I make your ovaries incandescent.

When a desperate, hungry spirit appears and makes the guinea pigs squeal it is because he knows where to put the live wire of sex, because he knows that beneath the hard carapace of indifference there is concealed the ugly gash, the wound that never heals.

Yes, he knows how to build a fire, but I know how to inflame a cunt.

Out yonder they may curse, revile, and torture one another, defile all the human instincts, make a shambles of creation (if it were in their power), but here, no, here, it is unthinkable, here there is abiding peace, the peace of God, and the serene security created by a handful of good neighbors living at one with the creature world.

The world is a cancer eating itself away... I am think that when the great silence descends upon all and everywhere music will at last triumph. When into the womb of time everything is again withdrawn chaos will be restored and chaos is the score upon which reality is written.

Whoever uses the spirit that is
in him creatively is an artist. To
make living itself an art, that is
the goal.

The most difficult thing to adjust to, apparently, is peace and contentment.

Visata susitraukė, liko tik miesto kvartalo dydžio, joje nebėra žvaigždžių, nebėra medžių, nebėra upių. Žmonės, kurie čia gyvena, yra mirę. Jie dirba kėdes, ant kurių kiti žmonės sėdi sapnuose.

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.

De wiegen der beschaving zijn de verpestende riolen van de wereld, het knekelhuis waarin de stinkende baarmoeders hun bloederige pakjes vlees en been toevertrouwen.

There is the happiness which comes from creative effort. The joy of dreaming, creating, building, whether in painting a picture, writing an epic, singing a song, composing a symphony, devising new invention, creating a vast industry.

What's a fuck when what I want is love?

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