Quotes from Henry Miller

Twilight hour. Indian blue, water of glass, trees glistening and liquescent.

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

Everything is packed into a second which is either consummated or not consummated.

Este greu,aproape absurd,s? le spui celor infirmi emo?ionali c? exprimarea de sine este mai mult decat important?.Nu ce anume exprimi ?i nici cum,s? te exprimi ?i atat.

Ai iubit-o candva,dar erai atat de satisf?cut c? poÈ›i iubi È™i pe altcineva în afar? de tine,încat ai uitat aproape imediat de ea.Te-ai urm?rit pe tine iubind.Ai purtat-o prin toate astea numai ca tu s? poÈ›i simÈ›i iar??i.

You can't make people joyous just by being joyous yourself. Joy has to be generated by oneself: it is or it isn't. Joy is founded on something too profound to be understood and communicated. To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts.

I had to grow foul with knowledge, realize the futility of everything; smash everything, grow desperate, then humble, then sponge myself off the slate, as it were, in order to recover my authenticity. I had to arrive at the brink and then take a leap in the dark.

We have so many points in common that it is like looking at myself in a cracked mirror.

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.

what does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?

Their confusion nourishes me, their stuttering is like divine music to my ears.

I am a man who would live an heroic life and make the world more endurable in his own sight. If, in some moment of weakness,of relaxation, of need, I blow off steam-a bit of red-hot rage cooled off in words-a passionate dream, wrapped and tied in imagery_well, take it or leave it...but don't bother me!

to love or be loved is no crime. the really criminal thing is to make a person believe that he or she is the only one you could ever love.

I tried to look earnest, but I only succeeded in looking pathetic.

Nothing is right or wrong but thinking makes it so. You no longer believe in reality but in thinking. And when you are pushed off the dead end your thoughts go with you and they are of no use to you.

When one spends what he has on himselef, when one has a thoroughly good time with his own money, people are apt to say he doesn't know what to do with his money.

Between laughs I could hear my mother's words ringing in my ears. "Why don't you write something that will sell?

Everything is endured—disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui—in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.

I believe everything you tell me, but I know that it will all turn out differently.

What if at the last moment, when the banquet table is set and the cymbals clash, there should appear suddenly, and wholly without warning, a silver platter on which even the blind could see that there is nothing more, and nothing less, than two enormous lumps of shit.

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognise them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.

But that was a long time ago and since then a crab has been gnawing at my vitals. All this began in the Metro (first-class) with the phrase - l'homme que j'etais, je ne le suis plus.

We need good titles.

When one spends what he has on himself, when one has a thoroughly good time with his own money, people are apt to say "he doesn't know what to do with his money." For my part, I don't see any better use to which one can put money. About such individuals one can't say that they're generous or stingy. They put money into circulation—that's the principal thing.