Quotes by Henry Miller

I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse.

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. Totell him that it is disgusting to spend one’s life shoveling up hotturds is a piece of imbecility. A man can get to love shit if hislivelihood depends on it, if his happiness is involved.

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

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.

I saw the errors I had made and assumed full responsibility for everything.

I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a chance to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to forget.

I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous [person], the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the [person] in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable.

Over and over again I have said that there is no way out of the present impasse. If we were wide awake we would be instantly struck by the horrors which surround us ... We would drop our tools, quit our jobs, deny our obligations, pay no taxes, observe no laws, and so on. Could the man or woman who is thoroughly awakened possibly do the crazy things which are now expected of him or her every moment of the day?

He read as much as his curiosity demanded - which is to say all

But you can’t put fight into a man’s guts if hehasn’t any fight in him. There are some of us so cowardly that youcan’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 themoment, who live a little ahead, or a little behind.

When a situation gets so bad that no solution seems possible there is left only murder and suicide, or both. These failing, one becomes a buffoon.

That we cannot rise equal to situations when we are in them — that is the tragedy of life.

For in Mexico, ladies and gentlemen, its always high noon and what glows is fuchsia and whats dead is dead and no feather-dusters.

No stone was laid upon· another with love or reverence; no street was laid for dance or joy. One thing has been added to another in a mad scramble to fill the belly, and the streets smell of empty bellies and full bellies and bellies half full. The streets smell of a hunger which has nothing to do with love; they smell of thc belly which is insatiable and of the creations of the cmpty helly which are null and void.

If you cant give the is-ness of a thing give the not-ness of it! The main thing is to hook up, get the wheels turning, sound off. When your brakes jam, try going in reverse. If often works.

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.

Every day that we fail to live out the maximum of our potentialities we kill the Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Christ which is in us.

We have no need for genius - genius is dead. We have need for strong hands, for spirits who are willing to give up the ghost and put on flesh...

For the moment I can think of nothing— except that I am a sentient being stabbed by the miracle of these waters that reflect a forgotten world.

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