Henry Miller

We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act according to their beliefs.

What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?

If I am against the condition of the world, it is not because I am a moralist - it is because I want to laugh more.

When you surrender, the problem ceases to exist. Try to solve it, or conquer it, and you only set up more resistance. . . . The most difficult thing to admit, and to realize with one's whole being, is that you alone control nothing. . . .

It is now the fall of my second year in Paris. I was sent here for a reason I have not yet been able to fathom. I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, i thought I was an artist. I no longer think about it. I am. There are no more books to be written, thank God.

Do not be duped by little duties. Do not be a chore man all your days.

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.

I don't think we should read for instruction but to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.

If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.

Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.

We live in the mind, in ideas, in fragments. We no longer drink in the wild outer music of the streets - we remember only.

Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.

There is no salvation in becoming adapted to a world which is crazy.

History is the myth, the true myth, of man's fall made manifest in time.

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.

Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. To-day I am proud to say that I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles. I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity - I belong to the earth!

Who but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination? The others - priest, teacher, saint, statesman, warrior - hold us to the path of history. They keep us chained to the rock, that the vultures may eat out our hearts. It is the artist who has the courage to go against the crowd; he is the unrecognized "hero of our time" - and of all time.

Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown.

The goal of life is not to possess power but to radiate it.

It is our destiny to live with the wrong as well as the right kind of citizens, and to learn from them, the wrong-minded ones, as much or more as from others. If we have not yet succeeded -after how many centuries?- in eliminating from life the elements which plague us perhaps we need to question life more closely. Perhaps our refusal to face reality is the only ill we suffer from, and all the rest but illusion and delusion. (p.26)