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“I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but to explain that school is over.”

Henry Miller

Source: The Rosy Crucifixion II: Plexus (1953), p. 599

“Every time you come to the limit of what is demanded of you, you are faced with the same problem-to be yourself!”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Capricorn

Source: Tropic of Capricorn

“He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.”

Henry Miller book Sexus

Context: A man writes to throw off the poison which he has accumulated because of his false way of life. He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment. No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in....

The Rosy Crucifixion I : Sexus (1949), Chapter 1. (New York: Grove Press, c1965, p. 17-18)

“Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.”

Henry Miller

“Your nearness is the nearness of planets. I am the void between you. If I withdraw there will be no void for you to swim in.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

“We have two American flags always: one for the rich and one for the poor. When the rich fly it means that things are under control; when the poor fly it means danger, revolution, anarchy.”

Henry Miller

“As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human significance in the performance.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

“Voyages are accomplished inwardly.”

Henry Miller

“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.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

“I am living at the Villa Borghese. There is not a crumb of dirt anywhere, nor a chair misplaced. We are all alone here and we are dead.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer

“The pygmies are one of the most cultured peoples on the face of the earth. They live a wonderful life, a life of purity. Not only are they busy and productive, they're happy and healthy as well. If we puny Americans had to live under their conditions, we'd perish in a day. Modern man has much to learn from the people he calls 'savages'. Before we are down to the last blade of grass it would be wise to study the life of the Pygmies. The secret of our own survival rests with them, the people who know how to make the most out of very little and find complete happiness with the bare essentials.”

Henry Miller

Reflections (1981)

“Many is the mirage I chased. Always I was overreaching myself. The oftener I touched reality, the harder I bounced back to the world of illusion, which is the name for everyday life. 'Experience! More experience!' I clamored. In a frantic effort to arrive at some kind of order, some tentative working program, I would sit down quietly now and then and spend long, long hours mapping out a plan of procedure. Plans, such as architects and engineers sweat over, were never my forte. But I could always visualize my dreams in a cosmogonic pattern. Though I could never formulate a plot I could balance and weigh opposing forces, characters, situations, events, distribute them in a sort of heavenly lay-out, always with plenty of space between, always with the certitude that there is no end, only worlds within worlds ad infinitum, and that wherever one left off one had created a world, a world finite, total, complete.”

Henry Miller book Plexus

The Rosy Crucifixion II : Plexus (1953)

“The trouble with Buddhism?-- in order to free oneself of all desire, one has to desire to do so.”

Henry Miller

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

“Vlaminck and Utrillo were very good friends, drinking buddies. One day they attend a funeral. They're walking behind the hearse in a procession, and they're having a great time conversing with one another. They are completely engrossed when suddenly one asks the other, 'Say, don't you smell something funny?' They look up and they're walking behind a garbage truck! They'd lost the hearse in the middle of their enthusiastic conversation.”

Henry Miller

Reflections (1981)

“The Battle is endless…we who babble and froth at the mouth have been at it since eternity.”

Henry Miller

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

“The Gnostics thought the planet Earth was a cosmic mistake. I too feel that way — I'm through with this Earth before I've even departed from it.”

Henry Miller

Reflections (1981)

“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

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

“I soon learned that one must give up everything and not do anything else but write, that one must write write write.”

Henry Miller

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)