Quotes from Henry Miller

To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.

What we all hope in reaching for a book, is to meet a man of our own heart, to experience tragedies and delights which we ourselves lack the courage to invite, to dream dreams which will render life more hallucinating, perhaps also to discover a philosophy of life which will make us more adequate in meeting the trials and ordeals which beset us. To merely add to our store of knowledge or improve our culture, whatever that may mean, seems worthless to me.

The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough of is love.

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.

Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am.

I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

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

Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.

Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end.

Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.

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.

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

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation... A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.

I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous [person], the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the [person] in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable.

To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth—I count that something of a miracle.

Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.

I want to undress you, vulgarize you a bit.

Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is.

If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.

I have found God, but he is insufficient.

To be joyous is to be a madman in a world of sad ghosts.

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy