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
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood
The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.
The word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must first conserve it.
I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but to explain that school is over.
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.
How different the new order would be if we could consult the veteran instead of the politician.
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
Giving and receiving are at bottom one thing, dependent on whether one lives open or closed. Living openly one becomes a medium, a transmitter; living thus, as a river, one experiences life to the full, flows along with the current of life, and dies in order to live again as an ocean.
The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.
We create our fate every day we live
Big Sur is the California that men dreamed of years ago, this is the Pacific that Balboa looked at from the Peak of Darien, this is the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look
Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.