Henry Miller Quotes - Page 12

Quotes about:

• Over there you think of nothing but becoming President of the United States some day. Potentially every man is Presidential timber. Here it's different. Here every man is potentially a zero. If you become something or somebody it is an accident, a miracle.

  Henry Miller

  Zero, Men, Thinking

  Henry Miller (1977). “Tropic of Cancer”

  4 Copy quote

• Her fluency was marvelous. She would say things at random, intricate, flamelike, or slide off into a parenthetical limbo peppered with fireworks-- admirable linguistic feats which a practiced writer might struggle for hours to achieve.

  Henry Miller

  Struggle, Might, Fluency

  Henry Miller (2007). “Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I”, p.17, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  14 Copy quote

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

  Henry Miller

  Literature, Streets

  Henry Miller (2007). “Black Spring”, p.3, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  7 Copy quote

• Whenever a taboo is broken, something good happens, something vitalizing. Taboos after all are only hangovers, the product of diseased minds, you might say, of fearsome people who hadn't the courage to live and who under the guise of morality and religion have imposed these things upon us.

  Henry Miller

  Hangover, People, Broken

  Henry Miller, Frank L. Kersnowski (1994). “Conversations with Henry Miller”, Univ Pr of Mississippi

  9 Copy quote

• The stabbing horror of life is not contained in calamities and disasters, because these things wake one up and one gets very familiar and intimate with them and finally they become tame again. No, it is more like being in a hotel room in Hoboken let us say, and just enough money in one's pocket for another meal.

  Henry Miller

  Life, Pockets, Meals

  Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

  6 Copy quote

• She may be lying in bed reading a book, she may be making love with a prize fighter, or she may be running like mad through a field of stubble, one shoe one, one shoe off, a man named Corn Cob pursuing her hotly. Wherever she is I am standing in complete darkness; her absence blots me out.

  Henry Miller

  Running, Lying, Book

  Henry Miller (2007). “Sexus: The Rosy Crucifixion I”, p.7, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  4 Copy quote

• If any man dared to translate all that is in his heart, to put down what is really his experience, what is truly his truth, I think then the world would go to smash, that it would be blown to smithereens and no god, no accident, no will could ever again assemble the pieces, the atoms, the indestructible elements that have gone to make up the world.

  Henry Miller

  Heart, Men, Thinking

  6 Copy quote

• A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation. Lend and borrow to the maximum.

  Henry Miller

  Lying, Book, Shelves

  Henry Miller (1969). “Mémoires, Plaidoiries Et Documents”, p.23, New Directions Publishing

  9 Copy quote

• Great God! What have I turned into? What right have you people to clutter up my life, steal my time, probe my soul, suckle my thoughts, have me for your companion, confidant, and information bureau? What do you take me for? Am I an entertainer on salary, required every evening to play an intellectual farce under your stupid noses? Am I a slave, bought and paid for, to crawl on my belly in front of you idlers and lay at your feet all that I do and all that I know?

  Henry Miller

  Stupid, Play, Feet

  7 Copy quote

• Surrealism is merely the reflection of the death process. It is one of the manifestations of a life becoming extinct, a virus which quickens the inevitable end.

  Henry Miller

  Reflection, Becoming, Viruses

  Henry Miller (1961). “The Cosmological Eye”, p.194, New Directions Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• The dreamer whose dreams are non-utilitarian has no place in this world. In this world the poet is anathema, the thinker a fool, the artist an escapist, the man of vision a criminal.

  Henry Miller

  Dream, Artist, Men

  Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare”, p.24, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• I demanded a realm in which I should be both master and slave at the same time: The world of art is the only such realm.

  Henry Miller

  Art, World, Slave

  Henry Miller (1964). “Henry Miller on Writing”, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

• Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk.

  Henry Miller

  Add, Literature, Cleansing

  Henry Miller, Frank L. Kersnowski (1994). “Conversations with Henry Miller”, Univ Pr of Mississippi

  7 Copy quote

• I had learned to harness ignorance with presumption. I was ready to become an unacknowledged watercolorist.

  Henry Miller

  Ignorance, Harness, Ready

  7 Copy quote

• What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?

  Henry Miller

  Truth, Lying, Long

  Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

  6 Copy quote

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

  Henry Miller

  Funny, Humor, Direct Action

  Henry Miller (1952). “Remember to Remember”

  7 Copy quote

• The Englishman, be it noted, seldom resorts to violence; when he is sufficiently goaded he simply opens up, like the oyster, and devours his adversary.

  Henry Miller

  Oysters, Violence, Resorts

  Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.52, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• The blind lead the blind. It's the democratic way.

  Henry Miller

  Democracy, Way, Blind

  Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare”, p.166, New Directions Publishing

  5 Copy quote

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

  Henry Miller

  Knowledge, Tree, Guilt

  Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.11, New Directions Publishing

  8 Copy quote

• As far as history goes I am dead. If there is something beyond I shall have to bounce back. I have found God, but he is insufficient. I am only spiritually dead. Physically I am alive. Morally I am free. The world which I have departed is a menagerie.

  Henry Miller

  Departed, Dawn, Alive

  "A Henry Miller reader".

  9 Copy quote

• We kill because we are afraid of our own shadow, afraid that if we used a little common sense we'd have to admit that our glorious principles were wrong.

  Henry Miller

  War, Common Sense, Shadow

  Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.115, New Directions Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet.

  Henry Miller

  Reading, Done, Toilets

  Henry Miller (1959). “The Henry Miller Reader”, p.25, New Directions Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Henry Miller

  Night, Mushrooms, Roots

  Henry Miller (2007). “Black Spring”, p.24, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

  18 Copy quote

• You can travel fifty thousand miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread.

  Henry Miller

  Food, America, Cooking

  Henry Miller (1959). “The Intimate Henry Miller”

  6 Copy quote

• One thing is certain, that when you die and are resurrected you belong to the earth and whatever is of the earth is yours inalienably. You become an anomaly of nature, a being without shadow; you will never die again but only pass away like the phenomena about you.

  Henry Miller

  Shadow, Passing Away, Anomalies

  Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

  6 Copy quote

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