Accepting This World
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 Book of Positive Quotations
America
You can travel fifty thousand miles in America
without once tasting a piece of good bread.
Encarta Book of Quotation The Staff of
Life, Remember to Remember
I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital, but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted
before it had a chance to ripen.
Encarta Book of Quotation The
Air-Conditioned Nightmare
It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the rest of the world -- it's the
American way of looking at things.
Encarta Book of Quotation Letter to Lafayette,
The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
American Language
…doesn't have any guts today. You're all castrated. You've become business
men, engineers, technicians. [Your language] sounds like wooden money dropping into a sewer.
Inventing Paradise The Greek Journey 1937-47 Colossus of Maroussi
Art
Art teaches nothing, except the significance of life.
Encarta Book of Quotation Reflections of Writing, The Wisdom of the
Heart
Artists
Artists never thrive in colonies. Ants do!
Creme de Carmel
The great artist is one who conquers the romanitic in himself.
Encarta Book of Quotation Black Spring
Being
The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.
The Book of Positive Quotations
Belief
What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act accordingly to their beliefs.
The Book of Positive Quotations
Bicycles
I took to calling my bike my friend, I carried on silent conversations with it. And of
course I paid it the best attention. Which meant that every time I returned home I stood the bike upside
down, searched for a clean rag and polished the hubs and the spokes. Then I cleaned the chain and greased it
afresh. That operation left ugly stains on the stone in the walkway. My mother
would complain, beg me to put a newspaper under my wheel before starting to
clean it. Sometimes she would get so incensed that she would say to me in full sarcasm, 'I'm surprised you don't
take that thing to bed with you!' And I would retort -- 'I would if I had a
decent room and a big enough bed.
Quotable Cyclist, The My Bike and other Friends
After a time, habituated to spending so many hours a day on my bike, I
became less and less interested in my friends. My wheel had now become my one and only friend. I could relay on it, which is more than I
could say about my buddies. It's too bad
no one ever photographed me with my friend. I would give anything now to know what we looked like.
Quotable Cyclist, The My Bike and other Friends
I took care of my wheel as one would look after a Rolls Royce. If it needed repairs I always brought it to
the same shop on Myrtle Avenue run by a named Ed Perry. He handled the bike with kid gloves, you
might say. He would always see to it that neither front nor back wheel wobbled. Often he would do a job for me without pay, because, as he put it, he
never saw a man so in love with his bike as I was.
Quotable Cyclist, The My Bike and other Friends
Often I was in the saddle, so to speak, from morning till evening. I rode everywhere and usually at a good
clip. Some days, I encountered some of the six-day riders at the fountain in Prospect Park. They would permit me to set the pace for them
along the smooth path that led from the Park to Coney Island.
Quotable Cyclist, The My Bike and other Friends
The Body
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.
Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Books
In recommending a book to a friend the less said the better. The moment you praise a book too highly you
awaken resistance in your listener.
Encarta Book of Quotation The Books in My Life
Quotations on Education Not given
I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has
only one great page in it: we must search for fragments, splinters, toenails,
anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body
and soul.
Tropic of Cancer
It is worse than being without water, not to have a book when you want it.
Conversation with Henry Miller
Change
No special group, no particular individual can change the world. I think the world is changed by the aggregate of people in it. By how they live individually. The great changes come by the things they don't do. By their inertia. It's that failure to live up to themselves that creates bad conditions. We always look for some Hitler, some target to blame. They are not the prime cases; the inert mind, the slothful, lazy mind is. There's the quick and the dead, and most of the world is dead. They're not having the kind of life one enjoys.
http://www.jenniferb.com/daily - Henry Miller in Conversations with Henry Miller P.171
Confusion
Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.
Encarta Book of Quotation On the Ovarian Trolly:
An Interlude, Tropic of Capricorn
Courage
There is something healthy and invigorating about direct action.
The Book of Positive Quotations
Criticism
Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion,
fire for fire.
Quotable Vices Sexus
Curiosity
I like to know what the men I love and admire look like. Everybody does, I
guess. Most men do not look at all like what you expect.
Remember to Remember
Destiny
Everyman has his own destiny: only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
Encarta Book of Quotation The Wisdom of the Heart
The Book of Positive Quatations
"F" word
26 examples of how Miller used fuck and its variations
Fate
We create our fate every day we live ... most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior
The Book of Positive Quotations
Freedom
Freedom includes everything. Freedom
converts everything to its basic nature, which is perfection.
Encarta Book of Quotation Sexus
Future
Nothing is determined in advance. The future is absolutely uncertain, the past is non-existent.
Encarta Book of Quotation Tropic of Capricorn
Ghika
[canvases are] as fresh and clean, as pure and
naked of all pretense, as the sea and light which bathes the dazzling islands.
Inventing Paradise The Greek Journey 1937-47 Colossus of Maroussi
God
I have found God, but he is insufficient. I am only spiritually dead. Physically I am alive. Morally I
am free.
Encarta Book of Quotation Tropic of Cancer
Greece
To know [Greece] thoroughly is impossible; to understand it requires genius; to fall in love
with it is the easiest thing in the world. It is like falling in love with one's own divine image reflected in a
thousand dazzling facets.
Inventing Paradise The Greek Journey 1937-47 Greece
I choose this image at random but how appropriate and accurate it is! When I think of Katsimbalis bending over to pick a flower from the bare soil of Attica
the whole Greek world, past, present and future, rises before me. I see again the soft, low mounds in which the
illustrious dead were hidden away; I see the violent light in which the stiff
scrub, the worn rocks, the huge boulders of the dry river beds gleam like mica;
I see the miniature islands floating above the surface of the sea, ringed with
dazzling white bands; I see the eagles swooping out from the dizzy crags of
inaccessible mountain tops, their somber shadows slowly staining the bright
carpet of earth below; I see the figures of solitary men trailing their flocks
over the naked spine of the hills and the fleece of their beasts all golden
fuzz as in the days of legend; I see the women gathered at the wells amidst the
olive groves, their dress, their manners, their talk no different now than in
Biblical times; I see the grand patriarchal figure of the priest, the perfect
blend of male and female, his countenance serene, frank, full of peace and
dignity; I see the geometrical pattern of nature expounded by the earth itself
in silence which is deafening. The Greek
earth opens before me like the Book of Revelation. I never knew that the earth contains so much;
I walked blindfolded, with faltering, hesitant steps; I was proud and arrogant,
content to live the false, restricted life of the city man. The light of Greece
opened my eyes, penetrated my pores, my whole
being.I came home to the world, having
found the true center and the real meaning of revolution. No warring conflicts between the nations of
the earth can disturb this equilibrium. Greece
herself may become embroiled, as we ourselves are now becoming embroiled, but I
refuse categorically to become anything less than the citizen of the world
which I silently declared myself to be when I stood in Agamemnon’s tomb. From that day forth my life was dedicated to
the recovery of the divinity of man. Peace to all men, I say, and life more abundant!
Greek File, The Colossus of Maroussi
Growth
When our very lives are threatened we begin to live. Even the psychic invalid throws away his
crutches in such moments.
Encarta Book of Quotation Sexus
Happiness
I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.
Encarta Book of Quotation Tropic of Cancer
Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Hope
All my life I had been looking forward to something happening, some
extrinsic event that would alter my life, and now suddenly, inspired by the
abusive hopelessness of everything, I felt relieved.
Encarta Book of Quotation Tropic of Cancer
Instincts
One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.
The Book of Positive Quotations
Introspection
The study of Crime begins with the knowledge of oneself.
Encarta Book of Quotation
Joy
Do anything, but let it produce joy.
Encarta Book of Quotation Tropic of Cancer
June
She seemed blue-black, white as chalk, ageless. There was not just the flow to and from, but the endless chute, the voluptuousness of restlessness. She was mercurial and at the same time of a savory weight. She had the marmoreal stare of a fawn embedded in lava. The time has come, I thought, to wander back from the periphery. I made a move toward the center, only to find the ground shifting from under my feet. I moved again out of the earth belt and behold, my hands were full of meteoric flowers. I reached for her with two flaming hands but she was more elusive than sand.
http://ntsrv2000.educ.ualberta.ca/nethowto/examples/bradley/mansfiel/millwrit.htm Tropic of Capricorn
How had she come to expand thus beyond all grip of consciousness? By what monstrous law had she spread herself thus over all the face of the world, revealing everything yet concealing herself? She was hidden in the face of the sun, like the moon in eclipse. She was mirror which had lost its quicksilver, the mirror which yields both the image and the horror. I heard her dreams mumbled in lost tongues, the stifled screams reverberating. In the minute crevices . . . I heard her utter my own name which I had not yet uttered.
http://ntsrv2000.educ.ualberta.ca/nethowto/examples/bradley/mansfiel/millwrit.htm Tropic of Capricorn
She had been seen rounding a certain point, she had dipped in here or there for what reason no one knew, she had done a tailspin elsewhere, she had passed like a comet, she had written letters of smoke in the sky, and so on and so forth. Everything she had done was enigmatic and exasperating, done apparently without purpose.
http://ntsrv2000.educ.ualberta.ca/nethowto/examples/bradley/mansfiel/millwrit.htm Tropic of Capricorn
Eyes closed, I summon her image. There it is, floating in the dark, a mask emerging from the spindrift: the Tilla Durieux bouche, like a bow; white, even teeth; eyes dark with mascara, the lids a viscous, glistening blue; hair streaming wild, black as ebony. The actress from the Carpathians and the rooftops of Vienna. Risen like Venus from the flatlands of Brooklyn.
http://ntsrv2000.educ.ualberta.ca/nethowto/examples/bradley/mansfiel/millwrit.htm Nexus
Knowledge
Sin, guilt, neurosis -- they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
Forbes Book of Business Quotations
Leaders
The real leader has no need to lead -- he is content to point the way.
Webster's New Explorer Dictionary of Quotations The Wisdom of the Heart
Life
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly,
serenely, divinely aware.
Encarta Book of Quotation Creative Death, The Wisdom of the Heart
I love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile,
words, everything that has time in it and becoming, that brings us back to the
beginning where there is never end.
Encarta Book of Quotation Tropic of Cancer
We are living a million lives in the space of a generation.
Encarta Book of Quotation Tropic of Cancer
My home is not in this world, nor in the next. I am a man without a home, without a friend,
without a wife. I am a monster who
belongs to a reality that does not exist yet.
Encarta Book of Quotation Tropic of Capricorn
Like ships, men flounder time and time again.
The Book of Positive Quotations
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously,
drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
Art of Sexual Magic, The Not given
Passport to the Soul, A Lifelong Journey Not given
Until we accept the fact that life itself is founded in mystery, we shall
learn nothing.
Soulful Sex Not given
I don't want to be bitter about life - about love and friendship and all the human, emotional entanglements,
I've had more than my share of human disappointments, deprivations,
disillusionment. I want to love people and life above all.
Literate Passion, A
Example moves the world more than doctrine.
The Book of Positive Quotations
I don't think of expanding my life in a physical way. I think of narrowing
it down.
Literate Passion, A
What a poverty stricken world! When they are not killing one another they
are licking their wounds. When they are not destroying they are repairing the
ravages they have made. And this is almost the whole of life.
Literate Passion, A
The dawn is breaking on a new world, a jungle world in which the lean
spirits roam with sharp claws. If I am a hyena I am a lean and hungry one: I go
forth to fatten myself.
Tropic of Cancer
It seems as if my own proper existence had come to an end somewhere. Just where exactly I can't make out. I'm not an American
anymore, nor a New Yorker, and even less a European, or Parisian. I haven't an
allegiance, any responsibilities, any hatreds, any
worries, any prejudices, any passion. I'm neither for nor against. I'm a
neutral.
Tropic of Cancer
Literature
Every man with a belly full of the classics is an enemy to the human race.
Encarta Book of Quotation Dijon, Tropic of Cancer
Miller
...not to be indicted as a 'pervert' or 'degenerate,' but simply as one who makes sex pleasurable and innocent!"
Writing Erotic Fiction Sexus
Even if everything I say is prejudiced,
spiteful, malevolent, even if I am a liar and a poisoner,
it is nevertheless the truth and it will have to be swallowed.
Encarta Book of Quotation Tropic of Capricorn
Inventing Paradise The Greek Journey 1937-47 Colossus of Maroussi
I'm no Shakespeare, no Hugo, no Balzac. Something a little higher than a louse. That's not overestimating myself, is it?
Encarta Book of Quotation Tropic of Capricorn
True Confessions edited by Jon Winokur
Music
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.
Encarta Book of Quotation Edgar Varese
in the Gobi Desert, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare.
Mystery
No matter what you touch and you wish to know about, you end up in a sea of
mystery…it's like the essence, isn't that right, it remains. This is the greatest damn thing about the
universe. That we can know so much,
recognize so much, dissect, do everything and we can't grasp it. And it's meant to be that way, do y'know. It's all
mystery.
Way of Wonder, The Not given
Neurosis
The neurotic is the flounder that lies on the bed of the river, securely
settled in the mud, waiting to be speared. For him death is the only certainty, and the dread of that grim
certainty immobilizes him.
Encarta Book of Quotation Sexus
Peace
There will be no peace until murder is eliminated from the heart and
mind. Neither God nor the Devil is
responsible and certainly not such puny monsters as Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, et alia. Certainly not such bugaboos
as Catholicism, Capitalism, Communism. Who put the demons there in our heart to torture us? A good question, and if the only way to find
out is to go to Epidaurus, then I urge you one and
all to drop everything and go there at once.
Inventing Paradise The Greek Journey 1937-47 Colossus of Maroussi
If you are at peace then you don't have to fight for peace.
Conversation with Henry Miller
The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.
The Book of Positive Quotations
Politics
One has to be a lowbrow, a bit of a murderer, to be a politician, ready and
willing to see people sacrificed, slaughtered for the sake of an idea, whether
a good one or a bad one.
Encarta Book of Quotation Writers at Work
Prostitution
Germaine was
different…Sauntering along the boulevard I had noticed her verging toward me
with that curious trot-about air of a whore and the run-down heels and cheap
jewelry and the pasty look of their kind which the rouge only accentuates. It was not difficult to come to terms with
her...In a few minutes we were in a five franc room on the Rue , the curtains drawn and the covers thrown back. She didn't rush things, Germaine. She sat on the bidet soaping herself and talked
to me pleasantly about this and that...As she stood up to dry herself, still
talking to me pleasantly, suddenly she dropped the towel and, advancing toward
me leisurely, she commenced rubbing her pussy affectionately, stroking it with
her two hands, caressing it, patting it, patting it. There was something about her eloquence at
that moment and the way she thrust that rosebush under my nose which remains
unforgettable...it was no longer just her private organ, but a treasure, a
magic, potent treasure, a God-given thing - and none the less so because she
traded it day in and day out for a few pieces of silver.
Cassell Dictionary of Sex Quotations Tropic of Cancer
"Now" he says, ‘I'm going to pay you as usual,' and taking a bill
out of his pocket he crumbles it and then shoves it up her quim."
Cassell Dictionary of Sex Quotations Black Spring
Renoir's style
He would have followed the rippling flesh, the full globes of her teats,
the easy, swaying stance, the superabundant strength of her arms, legs, torso;
he would have been ravished by the full generous slit of her mouth, by the dark
and burning glance of the eye, by the massive contours of the head and the
gleaming black waves which fell in cascades down her sturdy, columnar neck. [capturing]
the animal lust, the ardor unquenchable, the fire in the guts, the tenacity of
the tigress, the hunger, the rapacity, the all devouring appetite of the
oversexed female who is not wanted because she has an extra toe.
Inventing Paradise The Greek Journey 1937-47 Colossus of Maroussi
Science
The wallpaper with which the men of science have covered the world of
reality is falling to tatters.
Encarta Book of Quotation Tropic of Cancer
Security
The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificail ones which will have him no pain or trouble.
The Book of Positive Quotations
Seferis, George
…passionate about his own country, his own people, not in a hidebound
chauvinistic way but as a result of patient discovery following upon years of
absence abroad…had begun to ripen into a universal poet -- by passionately
rooting himself into the soil of his people...I envied his patriotism – rather,
his love of Greece -- something I have never been able to feel for my own
country.
Inventing Paradise The Greek Journey 1937-47 Colossus of Maroussi
Sex
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation…The other eight are
unimportant.
Medical Wit & Wisdom
Encarta Book of Quotation Sexus
Cassell Dictionary of Sex Quotations Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch
Soon I felt her mouth. I had still a
sort of semi hard on. She got it into
her mouth and she began to caress it with her tongue. I saw stars.
Going Down, Lip Service from Great Writers Not given
Moving with furious abandon, biting my lips, my throat, my ears, repeating like a crazed automaton, 'Go on, give it to me, go on, give it, go on, oh God, give it, give it me!' she went from one orgasm to another, pushing, thrusting, raising herself, rolling her ass, lifting her legs and twining them round my neck, groaning, grunting, squealing like a pig, and then suddenly, thoroughly exhausted, begging me to finish her off, begging me to shoot. 'Shoot it, shoot it...I'll go mad.' Lying there like a sack of oats, panting, sweating, utterly helpless, utterly played out, that she was, I slowly and deliberately rammed my cock back and forth, and when I had enjoyed the chopped sirloin, the mashed potatoes, the gravy and all the spices, I shot a wad into the mouth of her womb that jolted her like an electric charge.
Writing Erotic Fiction Sexus
Smells
Of nothing are you allowed to get the real odour
or savour. Everything is sterilized and wrapped in cellophane. The only odour
which is recognised and admitted as an odour is halitosis and of this all Americans live in mortal
dread.
Quotable Vices Not
given
Smiling
Smiling is one of the best relaxation exercises I know of.
Keep Smiling and have a Happy Day
Solitude
I always feel good when I'm alone. Solitude isn't frightening - it's
strengthening.
Literate
Passion, A
Irving Stettner
You are the one and only poet America has!
am reading slowly your poems. They go off like fire crackers!
You're a wonderful sample of whay Cendrars always talked about -- the poet-in-life.
Flyer about Pigeon Feather From letters by Henry Miller to Irving Stettner
Value
In some moods some things seem more important than others. Some things have
value, others don't, we say. Everything
is important and of value.
Devil in Paradise, A
War
War is not just war: it is a universe which each one explores to a
different end. Myself, I am terrified of
it… As long as I have two legs to run with I shall run from it, and if
necessary, crawl away on all fours… Even if what I see about me is Hell, it is
Life just the same, and I prefer this life of hell to the gamble of war. I love life above truth, above honor, above
friends, country, God or anything.
Inventing Paradise The Greek Journey 1937-47 Hamlet
Writing
I believe that when you write freely and easily and joyously, even if it
doesn't make sense, that you do more good than when you write seriously with
all your heart and soul and are trying to convince people.
Conversation
with Henry Miller
I'm a writer, and the only way for me to express myself fully is in
writing. When I talk I'm another person - I'm more imperfect in the handling of
my thoughts.
Conversation
with Henry Miller
Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature,
music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls
and interesting people. Forget yourself.
Right to Write, The Not given