Henry Miller

“1) Work on one thing at a time until finished.2) Start no more new books, add no more new material to "Black Spring."3) Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.4) Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!5) When you can't create you can work.6) Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.7) Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.8) Don't be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.9) Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.10) Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.11) Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.”

“Deep in the blood the pull of paradise. The beyond. It must have all started with the navel. They cut the umbilical cord, give you a slap in the ass, and presto! you're out in the world, adrift. You look at the stars and then you look at your navel. You grow eyes everywhere -in the armpits, between the lips, in the roots of your hair, on the soles of your feet. What is distant becomes near, what is near becomes distant. Inner-outer, a constant flux, a shedding of skins, a turning inside out.”

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

“Myself I cannot see the persistence of the artist type. I see no need for the individual man of genius in such an order. I see no need for martyrs. I see no need for vicarious atonement. I see no need for the fierce preservation of beauty on the part of a few. Beauty and Truth do not need defenders, nor even expounders. No one will ever have a lien on Beauty and Truth; they are creations in which all participate. They need only to be apprehended; they exist externally. Certainly, when we think of the conflicts and schisms which occur in the realm of art, we know that they do not proceed out of love of Beauty or Truth. Ego worship is the one and only cause of dissension, in art as in other realms. The artist is never defending art, but simply his own petty conception of art. Art is as deep and high and wide as the universe. There is nothing but art, if you look at it properly. It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis.”

“(...)I decided to let myself drift with the tide, to make not the least resistance to fate, no matter in what form it presented itself. Nothing that happened to me thus far had been sufficient to destroy me; nothing had been destroyed but my illusions(...)”

“(...) decidí dejarme llevar por la corriente, no oponer la menor resistencia al destino, como quiera que se presentase. Nada de lo que me había ocurrido hasta entonces había bastado para destruirme, nada había quedado destruido, salvo mis falsas ilusiones (...)”

“Beni ancak zengin bir kancık kurtarır,’ diyor büyük bir yılgınlıkla. ‘Sürekli yeni kancıklar peşinde koşmaktan yoruluyor insan. Mekanikleşiyor. Aşık olamıyorum, asıl sorun bu, anlıyor musun? Fazlasıyla bencilim. Kadınlar düş kurmama yardımcı oluyor sadece, hepsi bu. Kötü bir alışkanlık gibi, alkol gibi, afyon gibi. Her gün yeni bir am bulmayılıyım kendime; yoksa hastalıklı bir hal alıyorum. Fazla düşünüyorum. Bazen kendime, işi ne kadar çabuk bitirdiğime şaşıyorum - ve aslında ne kadar az anlamı olduğuna. Otomatiğe bağlamışım sanki. Bazen kadın filan düşünmüyorum ama birden kadının tekinin bana baktığını fark ediyorum ve küt! Yeniden başlıyor. Ne yaptığımı anlamadan bir bakıyorum ki odamdayız. Ne dediğimi bile hatırlamıyorum. Onları odama getiriyorum, kıçlarına bir şaplak atıyorum ve göz açıp kapayınaya değin bir bakıyorum ki iş bitmiş. Düş gibi.. Anlıyor musun ne demek istediğimi?”

“I am a man of the old world, a seed that was transplanted by the wind, a seed which failed to blossom in the mushroom oasis of America. I belong on the heavy tree of the past. My allegiance, physical and spiritual, it is with the men of Europe, those who were once Franks, Gauls, Vikings, Huns, Tatars, what not. The climate for my body and soul is here where there is quickness and corruption. I am proud not to belong in this century.”

“The artist is now giving a first coat of paint to that tautly stretched canvas which the scientist has been so busy stretching that he has forgotten the use he intended to put it to.”

“Every day that we fail to live out the maximum of our potentialities we kill the Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Christ which is in us.”

“Everybody is giving birth to something - everybody but the lesbian in the upper tier. Her head is uptilted, her throat wide open; she is all alert and tingling with the shower of sparks that burst from the radium symphony. Jupiter is piercing her ears.”

“From the little reading I had done I had observed that the men who were most in life, who were molding life, who were life itself, ate little, slept little, owned little or nothing. They had no illusions about duty, or the perpetuation of their kith and kin, or the preservation of the State. They were interested in truth and in truth alone. They recognized only one kind of activity - creation.”

“I didn’t lack thoughts nor words nor the power of expression— I lacked something much more important: the lever which would shut off the juice. The bloody machine wouldn’t stop, that was the difficulty. I was not only in the middle of the current but the current was running through me and I had no control over it whatever.”

“L'homme a ce choix :laisser entrer la lumière ou garder les volets fermés.”

“I had to learn to think, feel and see in a totally new fashion, in an uneducated way, in my own way, which is the hardest thing in the world. I had to throw myself into the current, knowing that I would probably sink. The great majority of artists are throwing themselves in with life-preservers around their necks, and more often than not it is the life-preserver which sinks them.”

“Amo tutto ciò che scorre, tutto ciò che ha in sé tempo e divenire, che ci riporta al principio dove non c’è mai fine: la violenza dei profeti, l’oscenità che è estasi, la saggezza del fanatico, il prete con la sua gommosa litania, le parole sozze della puttana, lo sputo portato via nella fogna, il latte della mammella e l’amaro miele che si riversa dall’utero, tutto ciò che è fluido, fuso, dissoluto e dissolvente, tutto il pus e il sudiciume che scorrendo si purifica, che perde il suo senso originario, che fa il grande circuito verso la morte e la dissoluzione. Il grande desiderio incestuoso è scorrere all’unisono col tempo, fondere la grande immagine dell’aldilà con quella dell’hic et nunc. Un desiderio fatuo, suicida, reso stitico dalle parole e paralizzato dal pensiero.”

“The world of men and women are making merry in the cemetery grounds. They are having sexual intercourse, God bless them, and I am alone in the Land of Fuck.”

“No matter where you go, no matter what you touch, there is cancer and syphilis. It is written in the sky; it flames and dances, like an evil portent. It has eaten into our souls and we are nothing but a dead thing like the moon.”

“There are people in this world who cut such a grotesque figure that even death renders them ridiculous. And the more horrible the death the more ridiculous they seem. It's no use trying to invest the end with a little dignity – you have to be a liar and a hypocrite to discover anything tragic in their going.”

“Estaba convencido de que, si las cosas me salían mal, a todo el mundo le salían mal. Y, por lo general, las cosas salían mal sólo cuando te preocupabas demasiado.”

“Pues sólo existe una gran aventura y es hacia adentro, hacia uno mismo, y para esa ni el tiempo ni el espacio, ni los actos siquiera, importan.”

“Ni una sola vez habían abierto la puerta que conduce hasta el alma; ni una sola vez se les ocurrió dar un salto a ciegas en la obscuridad.”

“Ninguna luna plateará nunca su apatía.”

“Miro al mar, al cielo, a lo ininteligible y distantemente cercano.”

“Oro es una palabra nocturna correspondiente a la mente crónica: en ella hay sueño y mito.”

“¡Hay algo venenoso en eso! Es tan fantástico que parece convincente”

“Eres cáncer y delirio" me dijo el otro día por teléfono”

“There is nothing strange about fear: no matter in what guise it presents itself it is something with which we are all so familiar that when a man appears who is without it we are at once enslaved by him.”

“Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; close up they are apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything they need to be surrounded with sufficient space―space even more than time.”

“At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of love―just enough to feed the birds.”

“Today I awoke from a sound sleep with curses of joy on my lips, with gibberish on my tongue, repeating to myself like a litany – "Fay ce que vouldras!… fay ce que vouldras!"; Do anything, but let it produce joy. Do anything, but let it yield ecstasy. So much crowds into my head when I say this to myself: images, gay ones, terrible ones, maddening ones, the wolf and the goat, the spider, the crab, syphilis with her wings outstretched and the door of the womb always on the latch, always open, ready like the tomb. Lust, crime, holiness: the lives of my adored ones, the failures of my adored ones, the words they left behind them, the words they left unfinished; the good they dragged after them and the evil, the sorrow, the discord, the rancor, the strife they created. But above all, the ecstasy!”

“Real wisdom is being stored away in the subcellars by the misers of learning.”

“Every time I pass the concierge's window and catch the full icy impact of her glance I have an insane desire to throttle all the birds in creation. At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of love – just enough to feed the birds.”

“Over and over again I have said that there is no way out of the present impasse. If we were wide awake we would be instantly struck by the horrors which surround us ... We would drop our tools, quit our jobs, deny our obligations, pay no taxes, observe no laws, and so on. Could the man or woman who is thoroughly awakened possibly do the crazy things which are now expected of him or her every moment of the day?”

“Yes, he knows how to build a fire, but I know how to inflame a cunt.”

“Para o homem que trabalha nas estrebarias e cuja função é varrer o esterco, o terror supremo é um mundo sem cavalos”

“In this chthonian world the only thing of importance is orthography and punctuation. It doesn't matter what the nature of the calamity is, only whether it is spelled right.”

“It is getting toward dinner time and people are straggling back to their rooms with that weary, dejected air which comes from earning a living honestly.”

“For the man in the paddock, whose duty is is to sweep up manure,the supreme terror is the possibility of a world without horses. Totell him that it is disgusting to spend one’s life shoveling up hotturds is a piece of imbecility. A man can get to love shit if hislivelihood depends on it, if his happiness is involved.”

“He’s like a hero come back from thewar, a poor maimed bastard living out the reality of his dreams.Wherever he sits himself the chair collapses; whatever door heenters the room is empty: whatever he puts in his mouth leaves abad taste. Everything is just the same as it was before; theelements are unchanged, the dream is no different than the reality.Only, between the time he went to sleep and the time he woke up,his body was stolen.”

“All I ask of life, he says, is a bunch of books, a bunch of dreams, and a bunch of cunt.”

“But about the smell of rancid butter... There are good associations too. When I think of this rancid butter I see myself standing in a little, old world courtyard, a very smelly, very dreary courtyard. Through the cracks in the shutters strange figures peer out at me.”

“There’s something depraved about screwing a woman who doesn’t give a fuck about it. It heats your blood…” And then, after a moment’s meditation— “Can you imagine what she’d be like if she had any feelings?”

“Germaine, on the other hand, was a whore from the cradle; she was thoroughly satisfied with her role, enjoyed it in fact, except when her stomach pinched or her shoes gave out, little surface things of no account, nothing that ate into her soul, nothing that created torment. Ennui! That was the worst she ever felt. Days there were, no doubt, when she had a bellyful, as we say – but no more than that! Most of the time she enjoyed it – or gave the illusion of enjoying it. It made a difference, of course, whom she went with – or came with. But the principal thing was a man. A man! That was what she craved. A man with something between his legs that could tickle her, that could make her writhe in ecstasy, make her grab that bushy twat of hers with both hands and rub it joyfully, boastfully, proudly, with a sense of connection, a sense of life. That was the only place where she experienced any life – down there where she clutched herself with both hands.”

“It’s like a man in the trenchesagain: he doesn’t know any more why he should go on living, becauseif he escapes now he’ll only be caught later, but he goes on justthe same, and even though he has the soul of a cockroach and hasadmitted as much to himself, give him a gun or a knife or even justhis bare nails, and he’ll go on slaughtering and slaughtering, he’dslaughter a million men rather than stop and ask himself why.”

“But you can’t put fight into a man’s guts if hehasn’t any fight in him. There are some of us so cowardly that youcan’t ever make heroes of us, not even if you frighten us to death.We know too much, maybe. There are some of us who don’t live in themoment, who live a little ahead, or a little behind.”

“In the four hundred years since the last devouring soul appeared; the last man to know the meaning of ecstasy, there has been a constant and steady decline of man in art, in thought, in action. The world is pooped out: there isn’t a dry fart left.”

“It's beautiful to have a smoking jacket, a good cigar and a wife who plays the piano. So relaxing. So lenitive. Between the acts you go out for a smoke and a breath of fresh air.”

“A man, when he's burning up with passion, wants to see things; he wants to see everything, even how they make water. And while it's all very nice to know that a woman has a mind, literature coming from the cold corpse of a whore is the last thing to be served in bed.”

“At night when I look at Boris' goatee lying on the pillow I get hysterical. O Tania, where now is that warm cunt of yours, those fat, heavy garters, those soft, bulging thighs? There is a bone in my prick six inches long. I will ream out every wrinkle in your cunt, Tania, big with seed. I will send you home to your Sylvester with an ache in your belly and your womb turned inside out. Your Sylvester! Yes, he knows how to build a fire, but I know how to inflame a cunt. I shoot hot bolts into you, Tania, I make your ovaries incandescent. Your Sylvester is a little jealous now? He feels something, does he? He feels the remnants of my big prick. I have set the shores a little wider. I have ironed out the wrinkles. After me you can take on stallions, bulls, rams, drakes, St. Bernards. You can stuff toads, bats, lizards up your rectum. You can shit arpeggios if you like, or string a zither across your navel. I am fucking you, Tania, so that you'll stay fucked. And if you are afraid of being fucked publicly I will fuck you privately. I will tear off a few hairs from your cunt and paste them on Boris' chin. I will bite into your clitoris and spit out two franc pieces...”