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Henry Miller quotes

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“To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth—I count that something of a miracle.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“When I realize that she is gone, perhaps gone forever, a great void opens up and I feel that I am falling, falling, falling into deep, black space. And this is worse than tears, deeper than regret or pain or sorrow; it is the abyss into which...” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of love—just enough to feed the birds.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“The most wonderful opportunity which life offers is to be human.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
“Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“We have no need for genius—genius is dead. We have need for strong hands, for spirits who are willing to give up the ghost and put on flesh…” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“What's a fuck when what I want is love?” Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
“I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion; I need the sunshine and the paving stones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself, with only the music of my heart for company.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“There’s something perverse about women... they’re all masochists at heart.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“Real wisdom is being stored away in the subcellars by the misers of learning.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“Everything is endured—disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui—in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“When into the womb of time everything is again withdrawn chaos will be restored and chaos is the score upon which reality is written.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“If you're trying to improve your mind, stop it! There's no improving the mind. Look at your heart and gizzard — the brain is in the heart.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
“I’m a bit retarded, like most Americans.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, for grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want everyone to scratch himself to death.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“There is only one thing which interests me vitally now, and that is the recording of all that which is omitted in books.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“I tried to look earnest, but I only succeeded in looking pathetic.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human significance in the performance.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“I’m an egotist, but I’m not selfish. There’s a difference. I’m a neurotic, I guess. I can’t stop thinking about myself. It isn’t that I think myself so important... I simply can’t think about anything else, that’s all.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
“I sit down beside her and she talks—a flood of talk. Wild consumptive notes of hysteria, perversion, leprosy. I hear not a word because she is beautiful and I love her and now I am happy and willing to die.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“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.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
“The cradles of civilization are the putrid sinks of the world, the charnel house to which the stinking wombs confide their bloody packages of flesh and bone.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“It is not difficult to be alone if you are poor and a failure. An artist is always alone—if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“I’ve lived out my melancholy youth. I don’t give a fuck any more what’s behind me, or what’s ahead of me. I’m healthy. Incurably healthy. No sorrows, no regrets. No past, no future. The present is enough for me. Day by day. Today!” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“Paris is like a whore. From a distance she seems ravishing, you can’t wait until you have her in your arms. And five minutes later you feel empty, disgusted with yourself. You feel tricked.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“Everything was for tomorrow, but tomorrow never came. The present was only a bridge and on this bridge they are still groaning, as the world groans, and not one idiot ever thinks of blowing up the bridge.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
“I have found God, but he is insufficient.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“The world around me is dissolving, leaving here and there spots of time. The world is a cancer eating itself away… I am thinking that when the great silence descends upon all and everywhere music will at last triumph.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“People are like lice—they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can’t get permanently deloused.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“I want you to live more vitally every day, as I am dead.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“We are swimming on the face of time and all else has drowned, is drowning, or will drown.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“I made up my mind that I would hold on to nothing, that I would expect nothing, that henceforth I would live as an animal, a beast of prey, a rover, a plunderer.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“There will be more calamities, more death, more despair. Not the slightest indication of a change anywhere. The cancer of time is eating us away.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“There are people in this world who cut such a grotesque figure that even death renders them ridiculous. And the more horrible the death the more ridiculous they seem.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live — if what others are doing is called living — but to express myself.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
“Nothing will avail to offset this virus which is poisoning the whole world. America is the very incarnation of doom. She will drag the whole world down to the bottomless pit.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“Nobody knows what it is to sit on his ass and be content.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
“For the moment I can think of nothing—except that I am a sentient being stabbed by the miracle of these waters that reflect a forgotten world.” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“Let us living ones dance about the rim of the crater, a last expiring dance. But a dance!” Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

Related topics

life death solitude miracle loneliness love heart time world chaos art self happiness passion music present ridicule confusion poison grotesque

Related sources

Tropic of Cancer (37)
Tropic of Capricorn (8)