Henry Miller Quotes

Living with a whore-even the best whore in the world-isn't a bed of roses.

One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar.

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

He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.

I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul.

The world around me is dissolving leaving here and there spots of time. The world is a cancer eating itself away.

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.

For the man in the paddock, whose duty is is to sweep up manure,
the supreme terror is the possibility of a world without horses. To
tell him that it is disgusting to spend one’s life shoveling up hot
turds is a piece of imbecility. A man can get to love shit if his
livelihood depends on it, if his happiness is involved.

Words are loneliness.

The word in your mouth is anarchy.

Up on the Brooklyn Bridge a man is standing in agony, waiting to jump, or waiting to write a poem, or waiting for the blood to leave his vessels because if he advances another foot the pain of his love will kill him.

Tomorrow is no hazardous affair, a day like any other day: tomorrow is the result of many yesterdays and comes with a potent, cumulative effect. I am tomorrow what I chose to be yesterday and the day before. It is not possible that tomorrow I may negate and nullify everything that led me to this present moment.

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

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

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.

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.

Life's wildest moment-she kneels on the sidewalk. Everything else she does is lies, lies.

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

Ik kwam er achter dat ik er mijn hele leven heus niet naar had verlang om te leven - als wat anderen doen tenminste leven genoemd kan worden - maar wel om mezelf te kunnen uitdrukken.

Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen.