Quotes from Henry Miller

i am a free man— and i need my freedom. i need to be alone. i need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; i need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.

Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.

Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with which they imbue it turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song.

the world is the mirror of myself dying.

have you ever seen a genius out there looking for a job? it's the saddest thing in the world. no one will hire him. there is only one place where he is always welcome- at the bottom.

What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.

Begin this moment, wherever you find yourself, and take no thought of the morrow. Look not to Russia, China, India, not to Washington, not to the adjoining county, city or state, but to your immediate surroundings. Forget Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and all the others. Do your part to the best of your ability, regardless of the consequences. Above all, do not wait for the next man to follow suit.

Great 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?

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

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.

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

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

Day by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at half-mast.

I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but to explain that school is over.

Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.

It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another person, not with the mind, not even with the heart.

I think someday you're going to be a great writer, he said. But he added maliciously, first you'll have to suffer a bit. I mean really suffer, because you don't know what the word means yet. You only think you've suffered. You've got to fall in love first.

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.

We create our fate everyday

I shoot hot bolts into you, I make your ovaries incandescent […] I am fucking you, Tania, so that you'll stay fucked.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.

My understanding of the meaning of a book is that the book itself disappears from sight, that it is chewed alive, digested and incorporated into the system as flesh and blood which in turn creates new spirit and reshapes the world.

Voyages are accomplished inwardly.