Quotes from Henry Miller

Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'

Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination.

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

And for that one moment of freedom you have to listen to all that love crap... it drive me nuts sometimes... I want to kick them out immediately... I do now and then. But that doesn't keep them away. They like it, in fact. The less you notice them the more they chase after you. There's something perverse about women... they're all masochists at heart.

History is the myth, the true myth, of man's fall made manifest in time.

In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.

Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe.

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

The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe, he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.

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. He need not and should not think of making a good living, but rather of creating a good life for himself. To live one's own life is still the best way of life, always was, and always will be.

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to enduring fact of mystery.

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

How different the new order would be if we could consult the veteran instead of the politician.

Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

Nine-tenths of our sickness can be prevented by right thinking plus right hygiene -- nine-tenths of it!

Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack.

Perhaps I am still very much of an American. That is to say, na?ve, optimistic, gullible. In the eyes of a European, what am I but an American to the core, an American who exposes his Americanism like a sore. Like it or not, I am a product of this land of plenty, a believer in superabundance, a believer in miracles.

Sin, guilt, neurosis --they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

The American ideal is youth -- handsome, empty youth.

The life of a creator is not the only life nor perhaps the most interesting which a man leads. There is a time for play and a time for work, a time for creation and a time for lying fallow. And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean -- when boredom seems the very stuff of life.

The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.