Quotes from Henry Miller

bomb-proof vault. Our diseases are our attachments, be they habits, ideologies, ideals, principles, possessions, phobias, gods, cults, religions, what you please. Good wages can be a disease just as much as bad wages. Leisure can be just as great a disease as work. Whatever we cling to, even if it be hope or faith, can be the disease which carries us off. Surrender is absolute: if you cling to even the tiniest crumb you nourish the germ which will devour you.

What we learn, of value, we get indirectly, largely unconsciously. It is too often stressed, in my opinion, that we learn through sorrow and suffering. I do not deny this to be true, but I hold that we also learn, and perhaps more lastingly, through moments of joy, of bliss, of ecstasy. Struggle has its importance, but we tend to overrate it. Harmony, serenity, bliss do not come from struggle but from surrender.

You have to be wiped out as a human being in order to be born again an individual.

Ai simÈ›ire,numai c? e greÈ™it orientat?.Inima ta funcÈ›ioneaz? spasmodic.EÈ™ti recunosc?tor celor ce îÈ›i fac inima s? sangereze;nu suferi din cauza lor,suferi ca s? poÈ›i gusta luxul de a suferi.?i înc? nici n-ai început s? suferi;suferi prin suferinÈ›a altora.

Life becomes a spectacle and, if you happen to be an artist, you record the passing show.

you can go to the trenches and be blown to bits; nothing will create that spark of passion if there isn't the intervention of a human hand. Somebody has to put his hand into the machine and let it be wrenched off if the cogs are to mesh again.

Art consists in going the full length. If you start with the drums you have to end with dynamite, or TNT.

In the egocentric prism the helpless victim is walled in by the very light which he refracts. The ego dies in its own glass cage...

The Earth is a paradise, the only one we will ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don't have to make it a paradise - it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it. The man with the gun, the man with murder in his heart, cannot possibly recognize paradise even when he is shown it.

There is no fundamental, unalterable difference between things: all is flux, all is perishable. The surface of your being is constantly crumbling; within however you grow hard as a diamond. And perhaps it is this hard, magnetic core inside you which attracts others to you willy-nilly.

The ten-o' clock breakfasters began to appear: nervous, little men, morose, preoccupied, who wiped their plates with crusts of bread; rude, massive women who, like primitive idols dug out of the soil, had grown rotten in the years; flowery dandies with repulsive faces, reminding him uncomfortably of illustrations in medical tracts.

Our world is rapidly drawing to a close; a new one is about to open. If it is to flourish it will have to rest on deeds as well as faith. The word will have to become flesh.

Chaos is een woord dat we hebben uitgevonden voor een orde die we niet begrijpen.

Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.

Better keep the young on lemons and lavender until they've reached the age of discretion.

The one thing I have insisted on with all of my friends, regardless of class or station in life, is to be able to speak truthfully. If I cannot be open and frank with a friend, or he with me, I drop him.

What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.

Enquanto vivermos com a consciência de nós próprios, nunca conseguiremos lidar com o mundo

what we have brought to perfection, in our zeal to escape the true reality, is a complete arsenal of destruction; when we have rid ourselves of the suicidal mania for a beyond we shall begin the life of here and now which is reality and which is sufficient unto itself. We shall have no need for art or religion because we shall be in ourselves a work of art...this is the way in which man will overcome his broken state.

One is ejected into the world like a dirty little mummy; the roads are slippery with blood and no one knows why it should be so. Each one is traveling his own way and, though the earth be rotting with good things, there is no time to pluck the fruits; the procession scrambles toward the exit sign, and such a panic is there, such a sweat to escape, that the weak and the helpless are trampled into the mud and their cries are unheard.

I had changed my francs into drachmas on the boat; it seemed like a tremendous wad that I had stuffed into my pocket and I felt that I could meet the bill no matter how exorbitant it might be. I knew we were going to be gypped and I looked forward to it with relish. The only thing that was solidly fixed in my mind about the Greeks was that you couldn't trust them; I would have been disappointed if our guide had turned out to be magnanimous and chivalrous.

She stood there waiting for me to approach, as though absolutely certain that I would take her by the arm and continue strolling down the avenue.

I might say, in passing, that my life seems to have been one long search for the Mara who would devour all the others and give them significant reality.

A writer often has two great surprises in store for him: the first is the lack of proper response to his efforts; the second is the overwhelming nature of the response when it does come. One is just as bad as the other.