Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Millerwas an American writer. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms, developing a new sort of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricornand The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, all of which are based on his experiences in New York and Paris, and all of which were banned in the United...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAutobiographer
Date of Birth26 December 1891
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
There is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books
We must not just be in the world and above the world, but also of the world. To love it for what it is... is the only task. Avoid it and you are lost. Lose yourself in it, and you are free.
All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet.
It was only in my forties that I started feeling young.
Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.
It was here in Big Sur that I first learned to say 'amen.'
All the lies and evasions by which man has nourished himself civilization, in a word is the fruits of the creative artist. It is the creative nature of man which has refused to let him lapse back into that unconscious unity with life which characterizes the animal world from which he made his escape.
To be cured, we must rise from our graves and throw off the cerements of the dead. Nobody can do it for another - it is a private affair which is best done collectively. We must die as egos and be born again in the swarm, not separated and self-hypnotized, but individual and related.
If you can fall in love again and again if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical you've got it half licked.
France may one day exist no more, but the Dordogne will live on just as dreams live on and nourish the souls of men.
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.
To know Paris is to know a great deal.
Work on one thing at a time until finished.
Understanding is not a piercing of the mystery, but an acceptance of it, a living blissfully with it, in it, through and by it.