Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.
Henry MillerRead
I haven't any allegiance, any responsibilities, any hatreds, any worries, any prejudices, any passion. I'm neither for nor against. I'm a neutral.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a state of neutrality where one is free from attachments and biases.
Henry Miller's quote highlights the concept of neutrality, suggesting that true freedom comes from not being bound by allegiances, responsibilities, or emotional investments. By declaring himself as 'a neutral,' Miller conveys a philosophical stance that values objectivity and detachment, allowing for a clearer perspective on life and the world around him.
In practice
Using this quote during a debate to emphasize the importance of impartiality.
Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.
I saw through to the last sign and symbol, but I could not read her face. I could see only the eyes shining through, huge, fleshy-like luminous beasts, as though I were swimming behind them in the electric effluvia of her incandescent vision.
The essential thing is to WANT to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.
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?
We are swimming on the face of time and all else has drowned, is drowning, or will drown.
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.
We tell ourselves stories in order to live...We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the "ideas" with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.
I love to move like a mouse inside this puzzle for the body, balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found.
Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal.
In order to get the power and retain it, it is necessary to love power; but love of power is not connected with goodness, but with qualities which are the opposite of goodness, such as pride, cunning, cruelty.
He [Zampano] probably would of insisted on corrections and edits, he was his own harshest critic, but I've come to believe errors, especially written errors, are often the only markers left by a solitary life: to sacrifice them is to lose the angels of personality, the riddle of a soul. In this case a very old soul. A very old riddle.
I shall assume that your silence gives consent.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.