Henry Miller Quotes - Page 17

Quotes about:

• The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.

  Henry Miller

  Evil, Progress, Different

  Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-conditioned Nightmare”, p.172, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• Plots and character don't make life. Life is here and now, anytime you say the word, anytime you let her rip.

  Henry Miller

  Rip, Character, Plot

  7 Copy quote

• I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there were one, I often said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face.

  Henry Miller

  Needs, Faces, Spit

  Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

  6 Copy quote

• How different the new order would be if we could consult the veteran instead of the politician.

  Henry Miller

  Order, Politics, Different

  Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.123, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world - it's the American way of looking at things.

  Henry Miller

  Ocean, Cutting, Sea

  Henry Miller (1945). “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare”

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Henry Miller

  Wise, Keys, Order

  Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-Conditioned Nightmare”, p.118, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• You can look at things all your life and not see them really. This ‘seeing’ is, in a way, a ‘not seeing,’ if you follow me.
  It is more of a search for something, in which, being blindfolded, you develop the tactile, the olfactory, the auditory senses —and thus see for the first time.

  Henry Miller

  Way, Firsts, Looks

  Henry Miller (1950). “The waters reglitterized”

  6 Copy quote

• There is something else to be said about this immediate, spontaneous way of working, and that is this: in such moments, one is playing at the game of creation.

  Henry Miller

  Games, Way, Moments

  6 Copy quote

• What are our conductors giving us year after year? Only fresh corpses. Over these beautifully embalmed sonatas, toccatas, symphonies and operas the public dance the jitterbug. Night and day without let the radio drowns us in a hog-wash of the most nauseating, sentimental ditties. From the churches comes the melancholy dirge of the dead Christ, a music which is no more sacred than a rotten turnip.

  Henry Miller

  Night, Symphony, Years

  Henry Miller (1945). “The Air-conditioned Nightmare”, [New York] : New directions

  6 Copy quote

• New York has a trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness if you have no inner stabilizer.

  Henry Miller

  New York, Insane, Vitality

  Henry Miller (2010). “The Colossus of Maroussi (Second Edition)”, p.159, New Directions Publishing

  6 Copy quote

• I read to be taken out of myself, to become ecstatic.

  Henry Miller

  Taken, Ecstatic

  Henry Miller, Frank L. Kersnowski (1994). “Conversations with Henry Miller”, Univ Pr of Mississippi

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Interest, One Thing

  Henry Miller, John Calder (1985). “A Henry Miller reader”, Riverrun Pr

  7 Copy quote

• Without a Coca-Cola life is unthinkable.

  Henry Miller

  Life Is, Coca Cola, Unthinkable

  Henry Miller (1970). “The Air-conditioned Nightmare”, p.258, New Directions Publishing

  17 Copy quote

• I didn't have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let's say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!

  Henry Miller

  Inspirational, Thinking, Air

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

  5 Copy quote

• To know Paris is to know a great deal.

  Henry Miller

  Paris, Deals, Knows

  4 Copy quote

• I will never again go to people under false pretenses even if it is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people.

  Henry Miller

  Integrity, Home, Writing

  Henry Miller (1961). “Tropic of Capricorn”, Grove/Atlantic

  4 Copy quote

• Fame is an illusive thing - here today, gone tomorrow. The fickle, shallow mob raises its heroes to the pinnacle of approval today and hurls them into oblivion tomorrow at the slightest whim; cheers today, hisses tomorrow; utter forgetfulness in a few months.

  Henry Miller

  Cheer, Hero, Gone

  7 Copy quote

• And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean, when boredom seems the very stuff of life.

  Henry Miller

  Mean, Boredom, Stuff

  7 Copy quote

• The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.

  Henry Miller

  Skeletons, Literature, World

  Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.191, New Directions Publishing

  7 Copy quote

• The city grows like a cancer; I must grow like a sun. The city eats deeper and deeper into the red; it is an insatiable white louse which must die eventually of inanition. I am going to starve the white louse which is eating me up. I am going to die as a city in order to become again a man. Therefore I close my ears, my eyes, my mouth.

  Henry Miller

  Cancer, Eye, Men

  Henry Miller (1966). “Tropic of Capricorn”

  4 Copy quote

• You start out with the sublime and you end up in an alley jerking away for dear life.

  Henry Miller

  Sublime, Dear Life, Ends

  "Black Spring".

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• Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.

  Henry Miller

  Art, Mean, Way

  Henry Miller (1941). “The Wisdom of the Heart”, p.24, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

• The word civilization to my mind is coupled with death. When I use the word, I see civilization as a crippling, thwarting thing, a stultifying thing. For me it was always so. I don't believe in the golden ages, you see... civilization is the arteriosclerosis of culture.

  Henry Miller

  Believe, Civilization, Mind

  4 Copy quote

• Those interested in celestial navigation are advised to first obtain a rudimentary knowledge of integral calculus, phlebotomy, astral physics and related subjects. The use of liquor is strictly forbidden on interplanetary flights.

  Henry Miller

  Use, Firsts, Navigation

  6 Copy quote

• No, there's fifteen francs somewhere, which nobody gives a damn about anymore and which nobody is going to get in the end anyhow, but the fifteen francs is like the primal cause of things and rather than listen to one's own voice, rather than walk out on the primal cause, one surrenders to the situation, one goes on butchering and butchering and the more cowardly one feels the more heroically does he behave, until a day when the bottom drops out and suddenly all the guns are silenced and the stretcher-bearers pick up the maimed and bleeding heroes and pin medals on their chest.

  Henry Miller

  Hero, Gun, Voice

  4 Copy quote

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