Henry Miller Quotes - Page 12

Quotes about:

• A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation... A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.

  Henry Miller

  Lying, Book, Mind

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

  6 Copy quote

• We must be holy without holiness. We must be whole, complete. That's being holy. Any other kind of holiness is false, a snare, and a delusion.

  Henry Miller

  Holiness, Kind, Holy

  Henry Miller (1963). “The Rosy Crucifixion”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

• 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

• 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

• The more I wrote, the more I became a human being. The writing may have seemed monstrous (to some) for it was a violation, but I became a more human individual because of it. I was getting the poison out of my system.

  Henry Miller

  Writing, Poison, May

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

  7 Copy quote

• Writing, like life itself, is a voyage of discovery. The adventure is a metaphysical one: it is a way of approaching life indirectly, of acquiring a total rather than a partial view of the universe. The writer lives between the upper and lower worlds: he takes the path in order eventually to become the path himself.

  Henry Miller

  Writing, Adventure, Discovery

  Henry Miller (1964). “Henry Miller on Writing”, 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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”

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• 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”

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• 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

• 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

• 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

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