Quotes from Henry Miller

I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there were one, I often said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face.

Were there a Christian so faithful to his God as I was to her we would all be Jesus Christ today.

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet. There are passages in Ulysses which can be read only in the toilet - if one wants to extract the full flavor of their content.

I struggled in the beginning. I said I was going to write the truth, so help me God. And I thought I was. I found I couldn't. Nobody can write the absolute truth.

Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.

A world without hope, but no despair

Imagination is the voice of the daring.

All growth is a leap in the dark.

We live at the edge of the miraculous.

It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir.

Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.

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.

The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.

Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.

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

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.

The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself. All that you despise, all that you loathe, all that you reject, all that you condemn and seek to convert by punishment springs from you.

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

Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring.

To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts.

The smile was so painfully swift and fleeting that it was like the flash of a knife.

We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.

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

Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine.