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Henry Miller Quotes
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Henry Valentine Miller was an American writer, expatriated in Paris at his flourishing. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms, developing a new sort of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Capricorn, The Colossus of Maroussi, The Time of the Assassins, and The Books in My Life, many of which are based on his experiences in New York and Paris , adding Big Sur and the Oranges of Heronymous Bosch while finally residing in Big Sur, California. He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors.

✵ 26. December 1891 – 7. June 1980   •   Other names Henry Valentine Miller
Henry Miller photo
Henry Miller: 187   quotes 78   likes

Henry Miller Quotes

“Perhaps the artist is nothing more than the personification of this universal maladjustment, this universal disequilibrium.”

Henry Miller

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

Universe

“Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”

Henry Miller
Life , Pain , Beauty , Evil

“This is not a book. This is libel, slander, defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants to God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty … what you will.”

Henry Miller book Tropic of Cancer

Source: Tropic of Cancer (1934), Chapter One

God , Time , Beauty , Art

“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….”

Henry Miller book Sexus

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

Courage , Falseness , Way , World

“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!”

Henry Miller book Plexus

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.
The Rosy Crucifixion II : Plexus (1953)

World , Life , Reality

“Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.”

Henry Miller

"The Enormous Womb", p. 96
The Wisdom of the Heart (1941)

Life

“It was here in Big Sur that I first learned to say 'amen.'”

Henry Miller book Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

Source: Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957), p. 32

Learning

“He saw the humorous aspect of everything, which is the real test of the tragic sense.”

Henry Miller book The Colossus of Maroussi

"He" is Miller's friend George Katsimbalis, the "Colossus" of the book's title.
The Colossus of Maroussi (1941)

Sense

“Words, sentences, ideas, no matter how subtle or ingenious, the maddest flights of poetry, the most profound dreams, the most hallucinating visions, are but crude hieroglyphs chiseled in pain and sorrow to commemorate an event which is untransmissible.”

Henry Miller

Source: Henry Miller on Writing (1964), p. 23

Pain , Idea , Dreams

“When a situation gets so bad that no solution seems possible there is left only murder or suicide. Or both. These failing, one becomes a buffoon.”

Henry Miller book Nexus

Source: The Rosy Crucifixion III: Nexus (1960), Ch. 3, p. 36

Suicide

“There's nothing wrong with the world. What's wrong is our way of looking at it.”

Henry Miller book Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

Source: Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957), p. 351

World , Way

“The most difficult thing to adjust to, apparently, is peace and contentment.”

Henry Miller book Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

Source: Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch (1957), p. 28

Peace

“[T]he blind lead the blind, it's the democratic way.”

Henry Miller book The Air-Conditioned Nightmare

The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945)
Source: "With Edgar Varèse in the Gobi Desert", p. 166

Way

“There ain't no such thing as civilization.”

Henry Miller book The Colossus of Maroussi

Source: The Colossus of Maroussi (1941) Part 2, p. 144

“What I really hoped for, no doubt, was to come upon one of those lives which begin nowhere, which lead us through marshes and salt flats, trickling away, seemingly without plan, purpose or goal, and suddenly emerge, gushing like geysers, and never cease gushing, even in death.”

Henry Miller book Nexus

Source: The Rosy Crucifixion III: Nexus (1960), Ch. 8, p. 129

Hope , Death

“Modern man has much to learn from the people he calls 'savages.'”

Henry Miller

Reflections (1981)
Context: 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.

People , Learning