This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will.
Henry MillerThe aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
Henry MillerOne can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.
Henry MillerDay by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at half-mast.
Henry MillerThe legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.
Henry MillerShe rises up out of a sea of faces and embraces me, embraces me passionately--- a thousand eyes, noses, fingers, legs, bottles, windows, purses, saucers all glaring at us an we in each other's arm oblivious. I sit down beside her and she talks--- a flood of talk. Wild consumptive notes of hysteria, perversion, leprosy. I hear not a word because she is beautiful and I love her and now I am happy and willing to die.
Henry MillerIt's good to be just plain happy, it's a little better to know that you're happy; but to understand that you're happy and to know why and how and still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well that is beyond happiness, that is bliss.
Henry MillerBut it's just because the chances are all against you, just because there is so little hope, that life is sweet over here.
Henry MillerWhat seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.
Henry MillerI like the one about the little soulworms that fly out of the nest for the resurrection.
Henry MillerI wanted to die; I wanted to surrender because I saw no sense in struggling. I felt that nothing would be proved, substantiated, added or subtracted by continuing an existence which I had not asked for.
Henry MillerGreat God! What have I turned into? What right have you people to clutter up my life, steal my time, probe my soul, suckle my thoughts, have me for your companion, confidant, and information bureau? What do you take me for? Am I an entertainer on salary, required every evening to play an intellectual farce under your stupid noses? Am I a slave, bought and paid for, to crawl on my belly in front of you idlers and lay at your feet all that I do and all that I know?
Henry MillerTo imagine a new world is to live it daily, each thought, each glance, each step, each gesture, killing and recreating, death always a step in advance. To spit on the past is not enough. To proclaim the future is not enough. One must act as if the past were dead and the future unrealizable.
Henry MillerThe prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.
Henry MillerMadness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.
Henry MillerThe enchanting, and sometimes terrifying, thing is that the world can be so many things to so many different souls. That it can be, and is, all these things at once and the same time.
Henry MillerAll growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.
Henry MillerThose interested in celestial navigation are advised to first obtain a rudimentary knowledge of integral calculus, phlebotomy, astral physics and related subjects. The use of liquor is strictly forbidden on interplanetary flights.
Henry MillerFor some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured-disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui-in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.
Henry MillerIf any man dared to translate all that is in his heart, to put down what is really his experience, what is truly his truth, I think then the world would go to smash, that it would be blown to smithereens and no god, no accident, no will could ever again assemble the pieces, the atoms, the indestructible elements that have gone to make up the world.
Henry MillerThe new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.
Henry MillerWere there a Christian so faithful to his God as I was to her we would all be Jesus Christ today.
Henry MillerFrance may one day exist no more, but the Dordogne will live on just as dreams live on and nourish the souls of men.
Henry MillerA man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. 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. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.
Henry MillerWho wants to be a hundred? What's the point of it? A short life and a merry one is far better than a long one sustained by fear, caution, and perpetual medical surveillance.
Henry MillerInstead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'
Henry MillerI felt free and chained at the same time - like one feels just before election, when all the crooks have been nominated and you are beseeched to vote for the right man.
Henry MillerThink 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.
Henry MillerIf we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
Henry MillerThere will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of our time is eating us away. Our heroes have killed themselves, or are killing themselves.
Henry MillerOut 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.
Henry MillerTo sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.
Henry MillerTo the man whose senses are alive and alert there is not even the need to stir from one's threshold.
Henry MillerPerhaps I have not lined his portrait too clearly. But if he exists, if only for the reason that I have imagined him to be. He came from the blue and returns to the blue. He has not perished, he is not lost. Neither will he be forgotten.
Henry MillerMan torturing man is a fiend beyond description. You turn a corner in the dark and there he is. You congeal into a bundle of inanimate fear. You become the very soul of anesthesia. But there is no escaping him. It is your turn now.
Henry MillerThe man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.
Henry Miller