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Henry Miller Quotes

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Famous Henry Miller Quotes

“Everything goes forward like oiled clocks; for each minute of the dial there are a million noiseless clocks which tick off the rinds of time. We are traveling faster than the lightning calculator, faster than starlight, faster than the magician can think. Each second is a universe of time. And each universe of time is but a wink of sleep in the cosmogony of speed. When speed comes to its end we shall be there, punctual as always and blissfully undenominated. We shall shed our wings, our clocks and our mantelpieces to lean on. We will rise up feathery and jubilant, like a column of blood, and there will be no memory to drag us down again.”

UniverseCosmosTime Passing
Book:Tropic of Capricorn
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“We have evolved a new cosmogony of literature, Boris and I. It is to be a new Bible - The Last Book. All those who have anything to say will say it here - anonymously. We will exhaust the age. After us not another book - not for a generation, at least. Heretofore we had been digging in the dark, with nothing but instinct to guide us. Now we shall have a vessel in which to pour the vital fluid, a bomb which, when we throw it, will set off the world. We shall put into it enough to give the writers of tomorrow their plots, their dramas, their poems, their myths, their sciences. The world will be able to feed on it for a thousand years to come. It is colossal in its pretentiousness. The thought of it almost shatters us.”

Books
Book:Tropic of Cancer
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“One passes imperceptibly from one scene, one age, one life to another. Suddenly, walking down the street, be it real or be it a dream, one realizes for the first time that the years have flown, that all this has passed forever and will live on only in memory; and then the memory turns inward with a strange, clutching brilliance and one goes over these scenes and incidents perpetually, in dream and reverie, while walking a street, while lying with a woman, while reading a book, while talking to a stranger . . . suddenly, but always with terrific insistence and always with terrific accuracy, these memories intrude, rise up like ghosts and permeate every fiber of one's being. Hencefoward everything moves on shifting levels—our thoughts, our dreams, our actions, our whole life. A parallelogram in which we drom from one platform of our scaffold to another. Henceforward we walk split into myriad fragments, like an insect witha hundred feet, a centipede with soft-stirring feet that drinks in the atmosphere; we walk with sensitive filaments that drink avidly of past and future, and all things melt into music and sorrow; we walk against a united world, asserting our dividedness. All things, as we walk, splitting with us into a myriad iridiscent fragments. The great fragmentation of maturity. The great change. In youth we were whole and the terror and pain of the world penetrated us through and through. There was no sharp separation between joy and sorrow: the fused into one, as our waking life fuses with dream and sleep. We rose one being in the morning and at night we went down into an ocean, drowned out completely, clutching the stars and the fever of the day.”

LifeDreamYouthNostalgiaMaturityWholenessReverieDividedness
Book:Black Spring
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“...the monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured- disgrace, humiliation, poverty, war, crime, ennui- in the belief that overnight something will occur, a miracle, which will render life tolerable. And all the while a meter is running inside and there is no hand that can reach in there and shut it off.”

Hope
Book:Tropic of Cancer
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“We [Americans] are accustomed to think of ourselves as an emancipated people; we say that we are democratic, liberty-loving, free of prejudices and hatred. This is the melting-pot, the seat of a great human experiment. Beautiful words, full of noble, idealistic sentiment. Actually we are a vulgar, pushing mob whose passions are easily mobilized by demagogues, newspaper men, religious quacks, agitators and such like. To call this a society of free peoples is blasphemous. What have we to offer the world beside the superabundant loot which we recklessly plunder from the earth under the maniacal delusion that this insane activity represents progress and enlightenment? The land of opportunity has become the land of senseless sweat and struggle. The goal of all our striving has long been forgotten. We no longer wish to succor the oppressed and homeless; there is no room in this great, empty land for those who, like our forefathers before us, now seek a place of refuge. Millions of men and women are, or were until very recently, on relief, condemned like guinea pigs to a life of forced idleness. The world meanwhile looks to us with a desperation such as it has never known before. Where is the democratic spirit? Where are the leaders?”

DemocracyGreedAmerican DreamAmerican Culture
Book:The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
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“I love everything that flows,’ said the great blind Milton of our times. I was thinking of him this morning when I awoke with a great bloody shout of joy: I was thinking of his rivers and trees and all that world of night which he is exploring. Yes, I said to myself, I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. I love the kidney with it’s painful gall-stones, it’s gravel and what-not; I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul...”

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Book:Tropic of Cancer
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“Umutsuz bir aşk çökmüşse gönlüne sabahın üçünde, özellikle onun orada, yerinde olmadığı kuşkusuna kapıldığında telefon etmeyi gururuna yediremiyorsan, ister istemez içe dönüp kendinle baş başa kalırsın; o anda akrep gibi sokarsın kendini ya da hiçbir zaman postalamayacağın mektuplar yazarsın ona, ya da odanda ileri geri volta atarsın, hem küfür hem dua edersin, sarhoş olursun ya da kendini öldürecekmiş gibi davranırsın. Bu gidişat bir süre sonra tatsızlaşır, bıktırır insanı. Yaratıcı biriysen -ama unutma , o anda boktan bir durumdasın- acılı anılardan ortaya elle tutulur bir şeyler çıkarabilir miyim diye sorarsın kendi kendine. Ve işte bir gece saat üç sularında başıma gelen tam buydu. Birden karar vermiştim , çektiğim acıyı tuvale dökecektim..”

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Author:Henry Miller
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“«Tienes que ser vida para mí hasta el final», según escribe. «Esa es la única forma de sostener mi idea de ti. Porque, como puedes ver, has quedado ligado a mí con algo tan vital, que no creo que pueda desembarazarme de ti. Ni tampoco lo deseo. Quiero que vivas cada día más vivamente, puesto que yo estoy muerto. Por eso es por lo que, cuando hablo de ti con otros, me siento un poco avergonzado. Es difícil hablar de un mismo tan íntimamente. »”

Tropic Of Cancer
Book:Tropic of Cancer
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“I love everything that flows,’ said the great blind Milton of our times. I was thinking of him this morning when I awoke with a great bloody shout of joy: I was thinking of his rivers and trees and all that world of night which he is exploring. Yes, I said to myself, I too love everything that flows: rivers, sewers, lava, semen, blood, bile, words, sentences. I love the amniotic fluid when it spills out of the bag. I love the kidney with it’s painful gall-stones, its gravel and what-not; I love the urine that pours out scalding and the clap that runs endlessly; I love the words of hysterics and the sentences that flow on like dysentery and mirror all the sick images of the soul...”

LanguageFlowWordsSentencesMiltonTropic Of CancerJohn MiltonI Love Everything That Flows
Book:Tropic of Cancer
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