Henry Miller Quotes

1) Work on one thing at a time until finished.2) Start no more new books, add no more new material t...

Previously, when I began to write this tale, I set out by saying that Mlle. Claude was a whore. She ...

The only peace the only security is in fulfillment.

The only thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give is enough love.

He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate t...

We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own...

There is something healthy and invigorating about direct action.

The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.

Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and go...

To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly...

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

The ordinary man is involved in action the hero acts. An immense difference.

No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in whi...

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

Example moves the world more than doctrine.

We have scholars galore, and kings and emperors, and statesmen and military leaders, and artists in ...

Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant

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

The only artists for whom I would make way are - children. For me the paintings of children belong s...

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.

Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: It comes and go...

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

The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author hims...

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

They never opened the door which leads to the soul.

literature coming from the cold corpse of a whore is the last thing to be served in bed.

No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed els...

Build your cities proud and high. Lay your sewers. Span your rivers. Work feverishly. Sleep dreamles...

When shit becomes valuable, the poor will be born without assholes.

Whoever uses the spirit that isin him creatively is an artist. Tomake living itself an art, that ist...

One of the reasons why so few of us ever act instead of react is because we are continually stifli...

I struggled in the beginning. I said I was going to write the truth so help me God. And I thought I...

The world is not to be put in order the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in ...

My one thought is to get out of New York, to experience something genuinely American.

I want to undress you, vulgarize you a bit.

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

If we are always arriving and departing, it is alsotrue that we are eternally anchored. One's destin...

Out yonder they may curse, revile, and torture one another, defile all the human instincts, make a s...

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

The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.

One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking things.

Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so r...

Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.

The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself.

I think if Jeremy Corbyn got a cloak, he'd make a very good Gandalf.

If there is to be any peace it will come through being not having.

The continent is full of buried violence, of the bones of antediluvian monsters and of lost races of...

Every man has his own destiny the only imperative is to follow it to accept it no matter where it...

Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it...

Serenity is when you get above all this, when it doesn't matter what they think, say or want, but wh...

Ik kwam er achter dat ik er mijn hele leven heus niet naar had verlang om te leven - als wat anderen...

It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change...

Like ships men flounder time and time again.

What I secretly longed for was to disentangle myself of all those lives which had woven themselves i...

Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way.

To the infra-human specimens of this benighted scientific age the ritual and worship connected with ...

Passing beneath the dance hall, thinking again of this book, I realized suddenly that our life had c...

There is the happiness which comes from creative effort. The joy of dreaming, creating, building, wh...

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

I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.

Every day that we fail to live out the maximum of our potentialities we kill the Shakespeare, Dante,...

Tomorrow you may bring about the destruction of your world. Tomorrow you may sing in Paradise above ...

For in Mexico, ladies and gentlemen, it's always high noon and what glows is fuchsia and what's dead...

Up on the Brooklyn Bridge a man is standing in agony, waiting to jump, or waiting to write a poem, o...

There are those of poor spirit and there are those of great spirit. None are without it but the flam...

When a situation gets so bad that no solution seems possible there is left only murder and suicide, ...

Even if it doesn't work, there is something healthy and invigorating about direct action

If at eighty you're not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good ...

Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything godlike about God, it is that. He dared to ...

No man ever puts down what he intended to say... words... are but crude hieroglyphs chiseled in pain...

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

This was the sort of ebullience and élan I prayed for when I felt the desire to write. I used to sit...

We are accustomed to think of ourselves as a great democratic body, linked by common ties of blood a...

There is one thing I like about the Poles—their language. Polish, when it is spoken by intelligent p...

To move forward clinging to the past is like dragging a ball and chain. The prisoner is not the one ...

I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous [person], the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restles...

Who but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination? The others - priest, t...

Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid or frightened, one swims. T...

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

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

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

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

Every day the choice is presented to us, in a thousand different ways, to live up to the spirit whic...

We defend with our lives the petty principles which divide us. The common principle, which is the es...

Crime begins with God. It will end with man, when he finds God again. Crime is everywhere, in all th...

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circul...

A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.

How speak about an art which no one recognizes as an art? I know that a great deal has already been ...

Tomorrow is no hazardous affair, a day like any other day: tomorrow is the result of many yesterdays...

He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism...

Over and over again I have said that there is no way out of the present impasse. If we were wide awa...

To paint is to love again, live again, see again. To get up at the crack of dawn in order to take a ...

For the moment I can think of nothing— except that I am a sentient being stabbed by the miracle of t...

My mind is curiously alert; it's as though my skull had a thousand mirrors inside it. My nerves are ...

When a desperate, hungry spirit appears and makes the guinea pigs squeal it is because he knows wher...

The world is a cancer eating itself away... I am think that when the great silence descends upon all...

He’s like a hero come back from thewar, a poor maimed bastard living out the reality of his dreams.W...

Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown...

We have no need for genius - genius is dead. We have need for strong hands, for spirits who are will...

One is ejected into the world like a dirty little mummy; the roads are slippery with blood and no on...