Quotes from Henry Miller

For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it off.

I had no time to make a world of my own: I had to stay fixed like Atlas, my feet on the elephant's back and the elephant on the tortoise's back. To inquire on what the tortoise stood would be to go mad.

We have no need for genius - genius is dead. We have need for strong hands, for spirits who are willing to give up the ghost and put on flesh...

It is the obscene horror, the dry, fucked-out aspect of things which makes this crazy civilization look like a crater. It is this great yawning gulf of nothingness which the creative spirits and mothers of the race carry between their legs.

Every day that we fail to live out the maximum of our potentialities we kill the Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Christ which is in us.

The task of genius is to keep the miracle alive, to live always in the miracle, to make the miracle more and more miraculous, to swear allegiance to nothing, but live only miraculously, think only miraculously, die miraculously.

I didn't lack thoughts nor words nor the power of expression— I lacked something much more important: the lever which would shut off the juice. The bloody machine wouldn't stop, that was the difficulty. I was not only in the middle of the current but the current was running through me and I had no control over it whatever.

He looks about the room at the few sticks of furniture, at the dirty bed sheets and the wash basin with the dirty water still in it, and he says: I am a slave! Every day he says it, not once, but a dozen times. And then he takes his guitar from the wall and sings.

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.

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

Such a healthy, simple, approving glance as if he were saying to himself: "Ah, spring is coming!" And God knows, when spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise.

Estoy muerto espiritualmente. Físicamente, estoy vivo. Moralmente, soy libre.

The world has not to be put in order: the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order, to know what is the world order in contradistinction to the wishful-thinking orders which we seek to impose on one another.

But there was a streak in me, a perverse one, which prevented me from giving the essential self. This perversity always voiced itself thus: Reveal your true self and they will mutilate you.

I remember that just as I was about to cross the border they asked me what I had to declare and, like an idiot, I answered: I want to declare that I am a traitor to the human race.

I do not believe in words, no matter if strung together by the most skillful man: I believe in language, which is something beyond words, something which words give only an adequate illusion of.

Overcoming the world. And thus finding it. For we must not only be in it and above it, but of it too. To love it for what it is- how difficult! And yet it's the first, the only task. Evade it, and you are lost. Lose yourself in it and you are free.

A beautiful nap this afternoon that put velvet between my vertebrae.

If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.

Words are loneliness. I left a couple of words for you on the tablecloth last night—you covered them with your elbows.

All the men she's been with and now you, just you, and the barges going by, masts and hulls, the whole damned current of life flowing through you, through her, through all the guys behind you and after you, the flowers and the birds and the sun streaming in and the fragrance of it choking you, annihilating you.

It's a wonderful thing, for half an hour, to have money in your pocket and piss it away like a drunken sailor. You feel as though the world is yours. And the best part of it is, you don't know what to do with it.

No quiero ser razonable ni lógico. ¡Los detesto! Quiero reventar de risa, quiero divertirme. Quiero hacer algo. Quiero sentarme en un café y pasarme el día hablando. Dios, nosotros tenemos nuestros defectos...pero tenemos entusiasmo. Es mejor cometer errores que no hacer nada.

Si tuviera la oportunidad de ser Dios, la rechazaría. Si tuviese la oportunidad de ser una estrella, la rechazaría. La oportunidad más maravillosa que ofrece la vida es la de ser humano. Abarca todo el universo. Incluye el conocimiento de la muerte, del que ni siquiera Dios goza.