Quotes from Henry Miller

To paint is to love again, and to love is to live life to the fullest.

The real enemy can always be met and conquered, or won over. Real antagonism is based on love, a love which has not recognized itself.

We must not just be in the world and above the world, but also of the world. To love it for what it is... is the only task. Avoid it and you are lost. Lose yourself in it, and you are free.

This is not a book in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... what you will.

Next to love friendship, in my opinion, is the most valuable thing life has to offer.

Cluster together like stars!

One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.

If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.

When spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise.

When you travel often, you will be addicted to it forever.

For a metaphysical treat stop at the Big Sur Inn, which is also a haven for stray cats and dogs. Life along the South Coast is just a bed of roses, with a few thorns and nettles interspersed.

Whatever I do is done out of sheer joy; I drop my fruits like a ripe tree. What the general reader or the critic makes of them is not my concern.

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

We don't trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation.

At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of love?just enough to feed the birds.

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.

The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition.

Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness.

On the meridian of time, there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama.

I believe in saying the truth, coming out with it cold, shocking if necessary, not disguising it.

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

Words are loneliness.

I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul.

I've lived out my melancholy youth. I don't give a fuck anymore what's behind me, or what's ahead of me. I'm healthy. Incurably healthy. No sorrows, no regrets. No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day. Today!