Henry Miller

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

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.

Life is constantly providing us with new funds, new resources, even when we are reduced to immobility. In life's ledger there is no such thing as frozen assets.

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

Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.

Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.

Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.

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.

Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine.

One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered, for the sake of an idea, whether a good one or a bad one.

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.

The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.

Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'

The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.

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

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.

In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.

The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.

Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.

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.

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

Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines - these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.

Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.

If I am against the condition of the world, it is not because I am a moralist - it is because I want to laugh more.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.

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.

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.

The world is the mirror of myself dying.

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

In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.

And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?

What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.

Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act according to their beliefs.

It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world - it's the American way of looking at things.

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

If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.

Plots and character don't make life. Life is here and now, anytime you say the word, anytime you let her rip.

No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe.

We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.

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

I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots.

I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.