Quotes from Henry Miller

Paris is like a whore.

Baudelaire merely laid his heart bare; Rimbaud plucks his out and devours it slowly.

Ma faiblesse à moi, c'est de crier sur les toits chaque fois que je crois avoir découvert quelque chose qui me paraisse d'une importance vitale.

Ceea ce nu se afl? în strad? este fals, mijlocit, altfel spus, literatur?.

Nimeni nu se simte mai bine decat omul care se lasa complet transportat.A fi inteligent e posibil s? constituie un avantaj,dar a fi total încrez?tor,credul pana la idioÈ›enie,a capitula f?r? rezerve este una din bucuriile supreme ale vieÈ›ii.

I understand full well that it is not the mob which creates the films we see—not technically, at any rate. But in a deeper sense it is the mob which actually creates the films. For the first time in the history of art the mob has dictated what the artist should do.

Non ho soldi,nè risorse,nè speranze.Sono l'uomo più felice del mondo

Germaine was different. There was nothing to tell me so from her appearance. Nothing to distinguish her from the other trollops who met each afternoon and evening at the Cafe de l'Elephant.

It seems wherever I go there is drama

Zamans?z doÄŸmuÅŸ insanlar vard?r; ülkesiz, s?n?fs?z ve geleneksiz doÄŸmuÅŸ insanlar vard?r. YaÅŸam? tek ba??na sürdürmeyi seçenler deÄŸil tam olarak; sürgünler, gönüllü sürgünler. Bunlar her zaman da duygusal deÄŸildir: belirli bir ÅŸeye ait deÄŸillerdir yaln?zca - yani hiçbir yere ait deÄŸildirler.

Had we written the history of but a single man in full , we should be able to read in it the history of all men; and had we recorded faithfully the story of but one thing, we should discover in it the story of all things.

John, did Peter Owen (publisher) send you a copy of my book about books? If not I shall flay him. You were first on the list. But the English move slowly. They are all constipated, water-logged, worm-ridden, damn them!

Everybody around me was a failure, or if not a failure, ridiculous. Especially the successful ones. The successful ones bored me to tears.

She crowned him with a whisky bottle and her tongue was full of lice and tomorrows.

Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls, and interesting people. Forget yourself.

Now we shall have a vessel in which to pour the vital fluid, a bomb which, when we throw it, will set off the world.

They don't want to see sad faces in Russia; they want you to be cheerful, enthusiastic, light-hearted, optimistic. It sounded very much like America to me. I wasn't born with this kind of enthusiasm

Men will sacrifice their lives to bring about a better world—whatever that may mean—but they will not budge an inch to attain paradise. Nor will they struggle to create a bit of paradise in the hell they find themselves.

There will be oceans of space in which to move about, to perambulate, to sing, to dance, to climb, to bathe, to leap somersaults, to whine, to rape, to murder.

Claude was just a good French girl of average breed and intelligence whom life had tricked somehow; something in her there was which was not tough enough to withstand the shock of daily experience. For her were meant those terrible words of Louis-Philippe: and a night comes when all is over, when so many jaws have closed upon us that we no longer have the strength to stand, and our meat hangs upon our bodies, as though it had been masticated84 by every mouth.

No one is born an artist. One elects for it! And when you elect to be the first and last among men you find nothing strange about sleeping with a donkey, putting your paws in the garbage pail, or swallowing reproaches and insults from all the near and dear ones who regard your way of life as a grave mistake.

She knows I did not come this evening to fertilize her. She knows there is something germinating inside me which will destroy her.

For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured—disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui—in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.

Perhaps our refusal to face reality is the only ill we suffer from, and all the rest but illusion and delusion.