Henry Miller
Each man has his own way of being himself and of saying it so ultimately that he can't be denied.Collection: Men
But you can’t put fight into a man’s guts if he hasn’t any fight in him. There are some of us so cowardly that you can’t ever make heroes of us, not even if you frighten us to death. We know too much, maybe. There are some of us who don’t live in the moment, who live a little ahead, or a little behind.Collection: Hero
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.Collection: Dream
The loss of sex polarity is part and parcel of the larger disintegration, the reflex of the soul's death, and coincident with the disappearance of great men, great deeds, great causes, great wars, etc.Collection: Death
Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; close up they are apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything they need to be surrounded with sufficient space―space even more than time.Collection: Distance
The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself.Collection: Study
The moment one is on the side of life; peace and security drop out of consciousness. The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.Collection: Peace
France may one day exist no more, but the Dordogne will live on just as dreams live on and nourish the souls of men.Collection: Dream
Of course you don't die. Nobody dies. Death doesn't exist. You only reach a new level of vision, a new realm of consciousness, a new unknown world.Collection: Death
What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.Collection: Acceptance
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.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Reality
Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.Collection: Individual
The only difference between the Adamic man and the man of today is that the one was born to Paradise and the other has to create it.Collection: Men
either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird.Collection: Believe
The poet speaks adequately only when he speaks somewhat wildly... not with intellect alone, but with intellect inebriated by nectar.Collection: Poetry
I am a free man―and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your compliments humiliate me! Your tea poisons me! I owe nothing to any one. I would be responsible to God alone―if He existed!Collection: Heart
Think only what is right there, what is right under your nose to do. It's such a simple thing - that's why people can't do it.Collection: Simple
When I realize that she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and I feel that I am falling, falling, falling into deep, black space. And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow, it is the abyss into which Satan was plunged. There is no climbing back, no ray of light, no sound of human voice or human touch of hand.Collection: Pain
I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Goal
Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with which they imbue it turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song.Collection: Running
Why change the world? Change worlds!Collection: Art
Many is the mirage I chased. Always I was overreaching myself. The oftener I touched reality, the harder I bounced back to the world of illusion, which is the name for everyday life.Collection: Reality
The waking mind, you see, is the least serviceable in the arts.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Beautiful
As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human significance in the performance.Collection: Passion
When I think of New York I have a very different feeling. New York makes even a rich man feel his unimportance. New York is cold, glittering, malign. The buildings dominate. There is a sort of atomic frenzy to the activity going on; the more furious the pace, the more diminished the spirit. A constant ferment, but it might just as well be going on in a test tube. Nobody knows what it's all about. Nobody directs the energy. Stupendous. Bizarre, Baffling. A tremendous reactive urge, but absolutely uncoordinated.Collection: New York
I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing.Collection: Mind
Next to love friendship, in my opinion, is the most valuable thing life has to offer.Collection: Friendship Love
We create our fate everydayCollection: Fate
When you travel often, you will be addicted to it forever.Collection: Forever
Begin this moment, wherever you find yourself, and take no thought of the morrow. Look not to Russia, China, India, not to Washington, not to the adjoining county, city or state, but to your immediate surroundings. Forget Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed and all the others. Do your part to the best of your ability, regardless of the consequences. Above all, do not wait for the next man to follow suit.Collection: Jesus
Art is only a means to life, the life more abundant. It merely points the way.Collection: Art
The earth is not a lair, neither is it a prison. The earth is a Paradise, the only one we'll ever know. We will realize it the moment we open our eyes. We don't have to make it a Paradise-it is one. We have only to make ourselves fit to inhabit it. The man with the gun, the man with murder in his heart, cannot possibly recognize Paradise even when he is shown it.Collection: Eye
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation... The other eight are unimportant.Collection: Funny
My world of human beings had perished. I was utterly alone in the world and for friends I had the streets, and the streets spoke to me in that sad, bitter language compounded of human misery, yearning, regret, failure, wasted effortCollection: Regret
An artist earns the right to call himself a creator only when he admits to himself that he is but an instrument.Collection: Artist
Voyages are accomplished inwardly.Collection: Voyages
We should not stop to reflect, compare, analyze, possess, but flow on and through, endlessly, like music.Collection: Flow
Life, as we all know, is conflict, and man, being part of life, is himself an expression of conflict. If he recognizes the fact and accepts it, he is apt, despite the conflict, to know peace and to enjoy it. But to arrive at this end, which is only a beginning (for we haven’t begun to live yet!), a man has got to learn the doctrine of acceptance, that is, of unconditional surrender, which is love.Collection: Acceptance
We are all guilty of crime the great crime of not living life to the full. But we are all potentially free. We can stop thinking of what we have failed to do and do whatever lies within our power. What those powers that are in us may be no one has truly dared to imagine. That they are infinite we will realize the day we admit to ourselves that imagination is everything. Imagination is the voice of daring.Collection: Lying
The American white man (not to speak of the Indian, the Negro, the Mexican) hasn't a ghost of a chance. If he has any talent he's doomed to have it crushed one way or another. The American way is to seduce a man by bribery and make a prostitute of him. Or else to ignore him, starve him into submission and make a hack of him.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Writing
At Epidaurus, in the stillness, in the great peace that came over me, I heard the heart of the world beat. I know what the cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world.Collection: Giving Up
Your whole past is like a long sleep which would have been forgotten had there been no memory, but remembrance is there in the blood and the blood is like an ocean in which everything is washed away but that which is new and more substantial even than life - reality.Collection: Memories
It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis.Collection: Stressed
Man, as man, has never realized himself. The greater part of him, his potential being, has always been submerged. What is history if not the endless story of his repeated failures?Collection: Men
I thought, when I came upon her, that I was seizing hold of life... Instead I lost hold of life completely. I reached out for something to attach myself to - and I found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach myself, left high and dry as I was, I nevertheless found something I had not looked for - myself.Collection: Effort