Henry Miller Quotes

We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.

I haven't any allegiance, any responsibilities, any hatreds, any worries, any prejudices, any passion. I'm neither for nor against. I'm a neutral.

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.

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

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

Either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird.

An artist earns the right to call himself a creator only when he admits to himself that he is but an instrument.

For there is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self, and for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter.

The trouble with Irene is that she has a valise instead of a cunt. She wants
fat letters to shove in her valise.

People used to envy me my inspiration. I hate inspiration. It takes you over completely. I could never wait until it passed and I got rid of it.

Understanding is not a piercing of the mystery, but an acceptance of it, a living blissfully with it, in it, through and by it.

The goal of life is not to possess power but to radiate it.

It was here in Big Sur that I first learned to say 'amen.'

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.

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

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.

It's the pleasure of picking up the brush and seeing what happens.

I believe in saying the truth, coming out with it cold, shocking if necessary, not disguising it.

The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.

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

History is the myth, the true myth, of man's fall made manifest in time.

The truly great writer does not want to write. He wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination.

Confirmations, corroborations rather than disillusionment. At eighteen I was as much of a philosopher as I ever will be.

This is the greatest damn thing about the universe. That we can know so much, recognize so much, dissect, do everything, and we can't grasp it.

Seeking, knowing, discovering, enjoying- these faculties or powers are pale and lifeless without realization.

The sun is setting fast. The colors die. They shift from purple to dried blood, from nacre to bister, from cool dead grays to pigeon shit.

Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.

We create our fate everyday

It has been that way ever since the Greeks - a blind fuck in the mud and then a quick spawn and then death.

Art is only a means to life, the life more abundant. It merely points the way.

Life becomes a spectacle and, if you happen to be an artist, you record the passing show.

They cut the umbilical cord, give you a slap on the ass, and presto! you're out in the world, adrift, a ship without a rudder.

Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.

I will sing while you croak.

Everything remains unsettled forever, depend on it

Though I've known you a short time, I feel I know you intimately. Not your life but you, your emotions, your dreams, your aspirations.

France may one day exist no more, but the Dordogne will live on just as dreams live on and nourish the souls of men.

Don't look away. Look straight at everything. Look it all in the eye, good and bad.

What we thrive on is hatred and violence; if we were a peaceable people we would have peace tomorrow.

You start with the sublime and end up in an alley jerking away for dear life.

There is nothing in itself which is wrong or evil not even murder.

i like everything that flows

The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.

A world without hope, but no despair

Think only what is right there, what is right under your nose to do. It's such a simple thing - that's why people can't do it.

When you know what men are capable of you marvel neither at their sublimity nor their baseness. There are no limits in either direction apparently.

I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live - if what others are doing is called living - but to express myself.

We should not stop to reflect, compare, analyze, possess, but flow on and through, endlessly, like music.

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.

If I am against the condition of the world, it is not because I am a moralist - it is because I want to laugh more.

If the poet can no longer speak for society, but only for himself, then we are at the last ditch.

It was just the human fatality of things, a cancer worse than blame, or hate or love.

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy

Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.

I soon found out you can't change the world. The best you can do is to learn to live with it.

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

The only law which is really lived up to whole-heartedly and with a vengeance is the law of conformity.

There is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books

Imagination is the voice of the daring.

No, we are never alone. But one has to live apart to know it for the truth.

As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human significance in the performance.

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet.

If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without.

We are swimming on the face of time and all else has drowned, is drowning, or will drown.

Every day the choice is presented to us, to live up to the spirit that is in us, or deny it.

Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.

I read to be taken out of myself, to become ecstatic.

How different the new order would be if we could consult the veteran instead of the politician.

I like the one about the little soulworms that fly out of the nest for the resurrection.

The purpose of life is to remember.

Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

Even if it doesn't work, there is something healthy and invigorating about direct action

When you travel often, you will be addicted to it forever.

For the moment I can think of nothing - except that I am a sentient being stabbed by the miracle of these waters that reflect a forgotten world.

I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.

Suffering is futile, my intelligence told me over and over, but I went on suffering voluntarily.

I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.

Next to love friendship, in my opinion, is the most valuable thing life has to offer.

He falls on her lap and lies there quivering like a toothache

I used to think a bird couldn't fly if its wings got wet.

The real enemy can always be met and conquered, or won over. Real antagonism is based on love, a love which has not recognized itself.

Words are loneliness.

The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death.

Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.

The man who is intoxicated with life does not pass judgment, does not seek to come to a conclusion, does not impose his message on the world.

He saw that it wasn't just a circus, but an arena, just like everywhere.

The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.

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

The whole world seemed to unroll like a pornographic film whose tragic theme is impotence.

What is an artist? He's a man who has antennae, who knows how to hook up to the currents which are in atmosphere, in the cosmos.

Art consists in going the full length. If you start with the drums you have to end with dynamite, or TNT.

Can you stop dead, and without thinking, radiate the truth which you know?

He wakes up utterly bored and discomfited, chagrined to think that he did not die overnight.

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act according to their beliefs.

All I ask of life, he says, is a bunch of books, a bunch of dreams, and a bunch of cunt.

I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing.

True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.

the world is the mirror of myself dying.