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
To paint is to love again, and to love is to live life to the fullest.
The light of Greece opened my eyes, penetrated my pores, expanded my whole being.
He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.
He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals
Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am.
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.
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.
Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall learn nothing.
When you surrender, the problem ceases to exist. Try to solve it, or conquer it, and you only set up more resistance. . . . The most difficult thing to admit, and to realize with one's whole being, is that you alone control nothing. . . .
I want to undress you, vulgarize you a bit.
Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.
To love! To surrender absolutely, to prostrate oneself before the divine image, to die a thousand imaginary deaths, to annihilate every trace of self, to find the whole universe embodied and enshrined in the living image of another! Adolescent, we say. Rot! This is the germ of the future life, the seed which we hide away, which we bury deep within us, which we smother and stifle and do our utmost to destroy as we advance from one experience to another and flutter and flounder and lose our way.
...when you are convinced that all the exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous.
Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen.