Quotes from Henry Miller

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.

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.

Don't look for miracles. You yourself are the miracle.

Actors die so loud.

A man of good will with a little effort and belief in his own powers can enjoy a deep, tranquil, rich life — provided he go his own way.... To live one's own life is still the best way of life, always was, and always will be.

I am a patriot—of the 14th Ward Brooklyn, where I was raised. The rest of the United States doesn't exist for me, except as idea, or history, or literature.

What's a fuck when what I want is love?

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

Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything except his own nature.

The imperfections of a man, his frailties, his faults, are just as important as his virtues. You can't separate them. They're wedded.

We kill because we are afraid of our own shadow, afraid that if we used a little common sense we'd have to admit that our glorious principles were wrong.

One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.

I'd rather sit down and write a letter than call someone up. I hate the telephone.

[On America:] Of nothing are you allowed to get the real odor or the real savor. Everything is sterilized and wrapped in cellophane.

I made up my mind that I would hold on to nothing, that I would expect nothing, that henceforth I would live as an animal, a beast of prey, a rover, a plunderer.

The Teutons have been singing the swan song ever since they entered the ranks of history. They have always confounded truth with death.

The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself.

It's good to be just plain happy; it's a little better to know that you're happy; but to understand that you're happy and to know why and how… and still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well that is beyond happiness, that is bliss.

The only thing we never get enough of is love and the only thing we never give enough of is love.

The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.

We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.

New York has a trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness if you have no inner stabilizer.

Serenity is when you get above all this, when it doesn't matter what they think, say or want, but when you do as you are, and see God and Devil as one.

The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.