Quotes by Henry Miller

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

We invent nothing, truly. We borrow and re-create. We uncover and discover. All has been given, as the mystics say. We have only to open our eyes and hearts, to become one with that which is.

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

Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything -- except his own nature.

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

For me the book is the man and my book is the man I am, the confused man, the negligent man, the recklass man, the lusty, obscene, boisterous, thoughtful, scrupulous, lying, diabolically thruthful man that I am.

I haven't any allegiance, any responsibilities, any hatreds, any worries, any prejudices, any passion. I'm neither for nor against. I'm a neutral.

One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless.

I was cursed or blessed with a prolonged adolescence; I arrived at some seeming maturity when I was past thirty. It was only in my forties that I really began to feel young. By then I was ready for it.

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognise them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.

Each man has his own way of being himself and of saying it so ultimately that he can't be denied.

Art consists in going the full length. If you start with the drums you have to end with dynamite, or TNT.

We ought to remind ourselves daily, repeat it like a litany, that in our being lies concealed the whole gamut of existence... Above all, we should cease postponing the act of becoming what in fact and essence we are.

The one thing I have insisted on with all of my friends, regardless of class or station in life, is to be able to speak truthfully. If I cannot be open and frank with a friend, or he with me, I drop him.

Make me into any fantastic shape, use all your art, exhaust your lung-power -- still I shall only be a thing fabricated, at the best a beautiful cultured soul.

When a desperate, hungry spirit appears and makes the guinea pigs squeal it is because he knows where to put the live wire of sex, because he knows that beneath the hard carapace of indifference there is concealed the ugly gash, the wound that never heals.

The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.

What I want is to open up. I want to know what's inside me. I want everybody to open up. I'm like an imbecile with a can opener in his hand, wondering where to begin -- to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I'm sure of it.

The secret to a happy life is having lots of interests. Interests are ammunition against despair.

Kafka's long nightmares were but a preparation for the actual horrors we were to experience even to a greater degree.

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

A beautiful nap this afternoon that put velvet between my vertebrae.

In her tight-fitting Persian dress, with turban to match, she looked ravishing.

Everything remains unsettled forever, depend on it.

She may be lying in bed reading a book, she may be making love with a prize fighter, or she may be running like mad through a field of stubble, one shoe one, one shoe off, a man named Corn Cob pursuing her hotly. Wherever she is I am standing in complete darkness; her absence blots me out.

Who wants to be a hundred? What's the point of it? A short life and a merry one is far better than a long one sustained by fear, caution, and perpetual medical surveillance.

In this chthonian world the only thing of importance is orthography and punctuation. It doesn't matter what the nature of the calamity is, only whether it is spelled right.

The world is always dying and always coming back to life. Tide and pulse, and with the turn of the tide a touch of mystery.

Taboos after all are only hangovers, the product of diseased minds, you might say, of fearsome people who hadn't the courage to live and who under the guise of morality and religion have imposed these things upon us.

The hope that we may one day awaken to a condition of life utterly different from that which we experience daily makes men willing victims of every form of tyranny and suppression. Man is stultified by hope and fear.

I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object.

The word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must first conserve it.

I used to think a bird couldn't fly if its wings got wet.

The imperfections of a man, his frailties, his faults, are just as important as his virtues. You can't separate them. They're wedded.

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

I am not drunk, and I am not sentimental, and I tell you you are the most wonderful woman in the world.

The Englishman, be it noted, seldom resorts to violence; when he is sufficiently goaded he simply opens up, like the oyster, and devours his adversary.

He was an incurable dandy living the life of a beggar. And living wholly in the past!

Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. It's a sort of spiritual clap, I should say.

It's the pleasure of picking up the brush and seeing what happens.

I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions.

We're creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world.

Cluster together like stars!

I read to be taken out of myself, to become ecstatic.

The enchanting, and sometimes terrifying, thing is that the world can be so many things to so many different souls. That it can be, and is, all these things at once and the same time.

I feel that America is essentially against the artist, that the enemy of America is the artist, because he stands for individuality and creativeness, and that's un-American somehow.

The Frenchman is first and foremost a man. He is likeable often just because of his weaknesses, which are always thoroughly human, even if despicable.

If one believes, then miracles occur.

Keep your libraries, your penal institutions, your insaneasylums... give me beer.You think man needs rule, he needs beer. The world does not need morals, it needs beer... The souls of men have been fed with indigestibles, but the soul could make use of beer.

By choosing to live above the ordinary level we create extraordinary problems for ourselves.

The City of New York is like an enormous citadel, a modern Carcassonne. Walking between the magnificent skyscrapers one feels the presence on the fringe of a howling, raging mob, a mob with empty bellies, a mob unshaven and in rags.

The most difficult thing to adjust to, apparently, is peace and contentment.

The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself.

I'm delirious because I'm dying so fast.

Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.

Keep your exclamation points under control!

My understanding of the meaning of a book is that the book itself disappears from sight, that it is chewed alive, digested and incorporated into the system as flesh and blood which in turn creates new spirit and reshapes the world.

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

Giving and receiving are at bottom one thing, dependent on whether one lives open or closed. Living openly one becomes a medium, a transmitter; living thus, as a river, one experiences life to the full, flows along with the current of life, and dies in order to live again as an ocean.

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet.

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

Everything was for tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. The present was only a bridge and on this bridge they are still groaning, as the world groans, and not one idiot ever thinks of blowing up the bridge.

Fame is an illusive thing -- here today, gone tomorrow. The fickle, shallow mob raises its heroes to the pinnacle of approval today and hurls them into oblivion tomorrow at the slightest whim; cheers today, hisses tomorrow; utter forgetfulness in a few months.

Until he man has become fully human, until he learns to conduct himself as a member of the earth, he will continue to create gods who will destroy him. The tragedy of Greece lies not in the destruction of a great culture but in the abortion of a great vision.

I think someday you're going to be a great writer, he said. But he added maliciously, first you'll have to suffer a bit. I mean really suffer, because you don't know what the word means yet. You only think you've suffered. You've got to fall in love first.

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.

People used to envy me my inspiration. I hate inspiration. It takes you over completely. I could never wait until it passed and I got rid of it.

What is an artist? He's a man who has antennae, who knows how to hook up to the currents which are in atmosphere, in the cosmos.

Either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird.

The man who is intoxicated with life does not pass judgment, does not seek to come to a conclusion, does not impose his message on the world.

To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.

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.

Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes.

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

The goal of life is not to possess power but to radiate it.

The world is two thirds spaghetti and meatballs, one third syphilitic chancre.

What I really hoped for, no doubt, was to come upon one of those lives which begin nowhere, which lead us through marshes and salt flats, trickling away, seemingly without plan, purpose or goal, and suddenly emerge, gushing like geysers, and never cease gushing, even in death.

I demanded a realm in which I should be both master and slave at the same time: The world of art is the only such realm.

Day by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at half-mast.

The piano bar is the gateway to the halls of masturbation.

The poet speaks adequately only when he speaks somewhat wildly... not with intellect alone, but with intellect inebriated by nectar.

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.

Work on one thing at a time until finished.

If you elect to join the herd you are immune. To be accepted and appreciated you must nullify yourself, make yourself indistinguishable from the herd. You may dream, if you dream alike.

One thing is certain, that when you die and are resurrected you belong to the earth and whatever is of the earth is yours inalienably. You become an anomaly of nature, a being without shadow; you will never die again but only pass away like the phenomena about you.

Words, sentences, ideas, no matter how subtle or ingenious, the maddest flights of poetry, the most profound dreams, the most hallucinating visions, are but crude hieroglyphs chiseled in pain and sorrow to commemorate an event which is untransmissible.

Death was more like what we went through in the park: two people walking side by side in the mist, rubbing against trees and bushes, and not a word between them. It was something emptier than the name itself and yet right and peaceful, dignified, if you like.

Music is the can-opener of the soul.

Everyman, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths.