Quotes from Henry Miller

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.

What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.

Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything godlike about God, it is that. He dared to imagine everything

Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient.

The poem is the dream made flesh, in a two-fold sense: as work of art, and as life, which is a work of art.

The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order.

It was only in my forties that I started feeling young.

It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.

When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.

Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.

We create our fate everyday

Actors die so loud.

The world itself is pregnant with failure, is the perfect manifestation of imperfection, of the consciousness of failure.

Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: It comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.

The real leader has no need to lead he is content to point the way

The only artists for whom I would make way are - children. For me the paintings of children belong side by side with the works of the masters.

I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.

Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.

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

The only law which is really lived up to wholeheartedly and with a vengeance is the law of conformity.

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

Americans can eat garbage, provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup, mustard, chili sauce, Tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper, or any other condiment which destroys the original flavor of the dish

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.