Henry Miller citations

Page 2

“Nous avons coutume de considérer que nous formons un grand corps démocratique dont les membres sont liés entre eux par une communauté de sang et de langage, et dont l'unité indissoluble est assurée par tous les modes de communication qu'ait pu tramer l'ingéniosité de l'homme; nos vêtements, notre alimentation sont identiques; nous lisons les mêmes journaux (exactement, titre, poids et tirage mis à part); nous sommes le peuple le plus collectiviste du monde, hormis quelques peuplades primitives que nous tenons arriérés dans leur développement. Et pourtant…
Pourtant, malgré tant d'apparences qui sembleraient prouver que nous sommes étroitement liés et apparentés; que nous vivons en bons voisins; que nous avons bon caractère; que nous sommes serviables, compatissants, fraternels presque, nous sommes un peuple solitaire, un troupeau morbide et dément, se démenant de tous côtés dans une rage frénétique et jalouse; un peuple qui voudrait oublier qu'il n'est pas ce qu'il croit, un peuple qui n'est pas réellement uni; dont les individus n'ont, les uns pour les autres, aucun dévouement réel, aucune attention réelle, ne sont, en vérité, que des unités brassées par Dieu sait quelle main invisible, selon une arithmétique qui n'est pas notre affaire.”

“Le seul chemin qui mène à la délivrance passe par la découverte et la reconnaissance du caractère unique de son identité.”

“C'est un monde fait pour des monomaniaques obsédés par l'idée de progrès… mais d'un faux progrès qui pue. C'est un monde encombré d'objets inutiles que, pour mieux les exploiter et les dégrader, on a enseigné aux homes et femmes à considérer comme utiles.”

“Nul n'est besoin de faire de la terre un paradis : elle en est un. A nous de nous adapter pour l'habiter.”

“A-t-on jamais vu chose inouïe comme un peuple libéré de la superstition, du rituel, de la religion, de l'argent, de la peur et du remords?”

“Le besoin de se surpasser doit être instinctif et non pas théorique ou seulement plausible.”

“Je commençais à lire, à trop lire. Je me tournais vers le dedans, je me refermais sur moi-même, comme font les fleurs, la nuit.”

“L'homme a ce choix :

laisser entrer la lumière ou garder les volets fermés.”

“Je le saluerais d'un cri de victoire, s'il [l'homme nouveau] pouvait prouver que l'existence, sur ce vaste continent, peut se passer des articles de première nécessité ci-dessus mentionnés [laboratoires, usines chimiques, aciéries, avions, munitions, tracteurs et aliments pasteurisés]. Oui, ce serait un type très suprême d'homme s'il apportait la démonstration que l'existence, tant ici qu'ailleurs, peut se passer de travail forcé, d'instruments de torture, d'outils de mort, d'argent, de dernière mode, de prophylaxie, de gouvernement et la suite.”

“La première comprend tous ces livres qu'on a vraiment l'intention de lire un jour mais qu'on ne lira sans doute jamais; dans la seconde se trouvent ceux qu'on devrait, estime-t-on, avoir lus, et dont on lira sans doute quelques-uns avant de mourir; la troisième compte les livres qu'on est à peu près certain de ne jamais lire, parce que rien, apparemment, ne pourra jamais abattre le mur de préjugés dressé autour d'eux.”

“Si nous étions lucides, instantanément l'horreur de ce qui nous entoure nous laisserait stupides. On ne saurait être parfaitement lucide et déambuler dans les rues de nos cités modernes sans en être affecté de façon ou d'autre. Ce qui ne signifie pas que nous devrions avoir envie de les reconstruire, nos cités, de les faire un peu moins laides - mais de les planter là, de filer pour ne plus revenir, oui. De tout flanquer en l'air, de plaquer le boulot, d'envoyer paître les obligations, le percepteur, les lois et tout ce qui s'ensuit. Un être humain parfaitement éveillé, croyez-vous qu'il se conduirait en cinglé, comme c'est le cas, comme on le lui demande, à chaque instant de la journée?”

“Pour une raison ou pour une autre, l'homme cherche le miracle, et pour l'accomplir, il pataugera dans le sang. Il se gorgera d'une débauche d'idées, il se réduira à n'être qu'une ombre, si, pour une seule seconde de sa vie, il peut fermer les yeux sur la hideur de la réalité. Il endure tout -disgrâce, humiliation, pauvreté, guerre, crime, ennui- croyant que demain quelque chose arrivera, un miracle! qui rendra la vie tolérable.”

“Derrière ces murs gris, se trouvent les étincelles humaines, et pourtant jamais un incendie ne se déclare. Sont-ce là des hommes et des femmes, me demandé-je, ou bien sont-ce des ombres, des ombres de marionettes tirées par d'invisibles ficelles? Elles se meuvent apparemment sans contrainte, mais n'ont nulles part où aller. Dans un seul royaume elles sont libres et peuvent vagabonder en liberté - mais elles n'ont pas encore appris à prendre l'essor. Jusqu'à présent, il n'est point de rêve qui ait pris l'essor.”

“- Quelle est votre ambition dans la vie?”
“- Devenir immortel, puis mourir.”

“Ma faiblesse à moi, c’est de crier sur les toits chaque fois que je crois avoir découvert quelque chose qui me paraisse d’une importance vitale.”

“We are dancing in the hollow of nothingness. We are one flesh, but separated like stars.”

“Even the idiot may have a message for us”

“There's something perverse about women… they're all masochists at heart.”

“Madness is tonic and invigorating. It makes the sane more sane. The only ones who are unable to profit by it are the insane.”

“have you ever seen a genius out there looking for a job? it's the saddest thing in the world. no one will hire him. there is only one place where he is always welcome- at the bottom.”

“It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another person, not with the mind, not even with the heart.”

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem.”

“My understanding of the meaning of a book is that the book itself disappears from sight, that it is chewed alive, digested and incorporated into the system as flesh and blood which in turn creates new spirit and reshapes the world.”

“But it's just because the chances are all against you, just because there is so little hope, that life is sweet over here.”

“Day by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at half-mast.”

“The worst sin that can be committed against the artist is to take him at his word, to see in his work a fulfillment instead of an horizon.”

“My hunger and curiosity drive me forward in all directions at once.”

“If we have not found heaven within, it is a certainty we will not find it without.”

“To be generous is to say yes before the man even opens his mouth.”

“To be free, as I then knew myself to be, is to realize that all conquest is vain, even the conquest of self, which is the last act of egotism. To be joyous is to carry the ego to its last summit and to deliver it triumphantly. To know peace is total: it is the moment after, when the surrenderer is complete, when there is no longer even the consciounsness of surrender. Peace is at the centre and when it is attainded the voice issues forth in praise and benediction. Then the voice carries far and wide, to the outermost limits of the universe. Then it heals, because it brings light and the warmth of compassion.”

“She was to me, and still is, the greatest person I have known - one who can truly be called a "devoted" soul. I owe her everything.”

“To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no least single object anywhere that is not money, money, money everywhere and still not enough, and then no money or a little money or less money or more money, but money, always money, and if you have money or you don't have money it is the money that counts and money makes money, but what makes money make money?”

“The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is, different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.”

“I am glad to be a maggot in the corpse which is the world.”

“The Happiest peoples, it is said, are those which have no history. Those who have a history, those who have made history seem only to have emphazied through their acomplishments the eternality of struggle. These disappear too eventually, just as those who made no effort, who were content to merely live & enjoy.”

“Through it all I learned the value of being humble to the dust, reduced to ashes. Everyone should experience that. Before you can recognize you're somebody, you have to know you're nobody. [-] The butterfly was just a lowly worm in its beginning. The worm didn't live with the moment-to-moment expectation of sprouting wings and taking flight. He lived a useful and productive life, the life of a worm. And he had to die a worm in order to be born as an angel! The spinning of the cocoon is, in and of itself, remarkable. It is as wondrous as the emergence and first flight of the butterfly.”

“For a hundred years or more the world, our world, has been dying. And not one man, in these last hundred years or so, has been crazy enough to put a bomb up the asshole of creation and set it off. The world is rotting away, dying piecemeal. But it needs the coup de grace, it needs to be blown to smithereens.”

“The man who doesn't respond to music, the man without music in his soul is not to be trusted. A man like that is cold and empty, empty to the core.”

“One day, during one of their sessions, Gurdjieff tells Peters to look out the window and describe what he sees. 'An oak tree' the child answers. 'And what do you see on the oak tree?' 'Acorns' Peters replies. 'How many of these acorns do you suppose will become trees?' Fritz Peters is stumped, [-] 'Maybe five or six?'
'No' retorts Gurdjieff. 'Only one will become a tree, perhaps, none! Nature is always very giving, but it only gives possibility. It takes hard work and great effort to become a tree or a genuine man.”

“Through art then, one finally establishes contact with reality: that is the great discovery. Here all is play and invention; there is no solid foothold from which to launch the projectiles which will pierce the miasma of folly, ignorance and greed. The world has not to be put in order: the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order, to know what is the world order in contradistinction to the wishful-thinking orders which we seek to impose on one another. The power which we long to possess, in order to establish the good, the true and the beautiful, would prove to be, if we could have it, but the means of destroying one another. It is fortunate that we are powerless.”

“Take a good look at me. Now tell me, do you think I'm the sort of fellow who gives a fuck what happens once he's dead?”

“I am a free man-and I need my freedom. I need to be alone. I need to ponder my shame and my despair in seclusion. I need sunshine and paving tones of the streets without companions, without conversation, face to face with myself with only the music of my heart for company. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your compliments humiliate me. Your tea poisons me! I owe nothing to anyone, I would've responsible to God alone-if he exited!”

“I'm crazy enough to believe that the happiest man on earth is the man with the fewest needs.”

“The great ones do not set up offices, charge fees, give lectures, or write books. Wisdom is silent, and the most effective propaganda for truth is the force of personal example. The great ones attract disciples, lesser figures whose mission is to preach and to teach. These are gospelers who, unequal to the highest task, spend their lives in converting others. The great ones are indifferent, in the profoundest sense. They don't ask you to believe: they electrify you by their behavior. They are the awakeners.”