Quotes from Henry Miller

I'm an egotist, but I'm not selfish. There's a difference. I'm a neurotic, I guess. I can't stop thinking about myself. It isn't that I think myself so important... I simply can't think about anything else, that's all. If I could fall in love with a woman that might help some. But I can't find a woman who interests me.

We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.

When you surrender, the problem ceases to exist. Try to solve it,or conquer it, and you only set up more resistance. I am very certain now that, as I said therein, if I truly become what I wish to be, the burden will fall away. The most difficult thing to admit, and to realize with one's whole being, is that you alone control nothing.

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.

She rises up out of a sea of faces and embraces me, embraces me passionately--- a thousand eyes, noses, fingers, legs, bottles, windows, purses, saucers all glaring at us an we in each other's arm oblivious. I sit down beside her and she talks--- a flood of talk. Wild consumptive notes of hysteria, perversion, leprosy. I hear not a word because she is beautiful and I love her and now I am happy and willing to die.

No one asks you to throw Mozart out of the window. Keep Mozart. Cherish him. Keep Moses too, and Buddha and Lao Tzu and Christ. Keep them in your heart. But make room for the others, the coming ones, the ones who are already scratching on the window-panes.

Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.

If I were reading a book and happened to strike a wonderful passage I would close the book then and there and go for a walk. I hated the thought of coming to the end of a good book. I would tease it along, delay the inevitable as long as possible, But always, when I hit a great passage, I would stop reading immediately. Out I would go, rain, hail, snow or ice, and chew the cud.

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.

I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing.

I'm a bit retarded, like most Americans.

It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another human being, not with the mind, nor even with the heart.

People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused.

Whoever uses the spirit that is in him creatively is an artist. To make living itself an art, that is the goal.

No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.

Paris is like a whore. From a distance she seems ravishing, you can't wait until you have her in your arms. And five minutes later you feel empty, disgusted with yourself. You feel tricked.

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.

I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live - if what others are doing is called living - but to express myself.

The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.

The world is not to be put in order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.

True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.

I want to get more familiar with you. I love you. I loved you when you came and sat on the bed--all that second afternoon was like warm mist--and I hear again the way you say my name--with that queer accent of yours. You arouse in me such a mixture of feelings, I don't know how to approach you. Only come to me--get closer and closer to me. It will be beautiful, I promise you.