Henry Miller: Quotes about the world (page 2)

“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)

Life , World , Dreams , Reality

“We’re creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world.”

Henry Miller book Sexus

The Rosy Crucifixion I : Sexus (1949)

World

“To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.”

Henry Miller

"Reunion in Brooklyn" http://books.google.com/books?id=uzz94pR0VQsC&q=%22To+live+without+killing+is+a+thought+which+could+electrify+the+world+if+men+were+only+capable+of+staying+awake+long+enough+to+let+the+idea+soak+in%22&pg=PA131#v=onepage, Sunday After the War (1944)

Men , World , Idea

“The truly great writer does not want to write. He wants the world to be a place in which he can live the life of the imagination.”

Henry Miller

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

Life , World , Imagination

“The history of the world is the history of a privileged few.”

Henry Miller

Sunday after the war (1944), pub. New Directions.

World , History

“A guy who's always interested in the condition of the world, and changing it, either has no problems of his own, or refuses to face them… not wanting to face things of his own nature.”

Henry Miller

Reds (1981)

World , Guy , Nature , Problem

“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

“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