Henry Miller

“Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown...”

“You have to die a human being to be reborn an individual.”

“What I want is to open up. I want to know what's inside me. I want everybody to open up. I'm like an imbecile with a can opener in his hand, wondering where to begin-- to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I'm sure of it.”

“Her fluency was marvelous. She would say things at random, intricate, flamelike, or slide off into a parenthetical limbo peppered with fireworks-- admirable linguistic feats which a practiced writer might struggle for hours to achieve.”

“She may be lying in bed reading a book, she may be making love with a prize fighter, or she may be running like mad through a field of stubble, one shoe one, one shoe off, a man named Corn Cob pursuing her hotly. Wherever she is I am standing in complete darkness; her absence blots me out.”

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

“i like everything that flows”

“Naktis kybojo virš žemės, aštri kaip durklas, girta kaip pamišėlė.”

“Visata susitraukė, liko tik miesto kvartalo dydžio, joje nebėra žvaigždžių, nebėra medžių, nebėra upių. Žmonės, kurie čia gyvena, yra mirę. Jie dirba kėdes, ant kurių kiti žmonės sėdi sapnuose.”

“Zo iemand doet niet aan bommen gooien, aan opstanden; hij wil niet meer reageren, niet uit traagheid en niet uit wreedheid. Van alle mensen ter wereld wenst deze persoon dat de daad een manifestatie van het leven is. En zo hij, om deze verschrikkelijke behoefte te kunnen verwerkelijken, niet vooruit maar achteruit werkt, zo hij onmaatschappelijk wordt, begint te stammelen en te stotteren, zo volkomen onaangepast blijkt te zijn dat hij zijn boterham niet kan verdienen, dan kan men ervan op aan dat deze man de weg heeft gevonden die hem weer in de schoot en de bron van het leven terugvoert.”

“Mijn vrienden daarentegen verschansten zich nog steviger in de kleine loopgraaf van het begrijpen, een loopgraaf die ze voor zichzelf gegraven hadden. Ze stierven heel comfortabel in hun bedje van begrijpen, werden nuttige leden van de maatschappij. Ik had medelijden met hen, en al heel gauw liet ik ze, zonder de minste spijt, één voor één in de steek.”

“Ik kwam er achter dat ik er mijn hele leven heus niet naar had verlang om te leven - als wat anderen doen tenminste leven genoemd kan worden - maar wel om mezelf te kunnen uitdrukken.”

“He looks about the room at the few sticks of furniture, at the dirty bed sheets and the wash basin with the dirty water still in it, and he says: "I am a slave!" Every day he says it, not once, but a dozen times. And then he takes his guitar from the wall and sings.”

“America is no place for an artist: to be an artist is to be a moral leper, an economic misfit, a social liability. A corn-fed hog enjoys a better life than a creative writer, painter or musician. To be a rabbit is better still.”

“It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another human being, not with the mind, nor even with the heart.”

“the world is the mirror of myself dying.”

“I made up my mind that I would hold onto nothing, that I would expect nothing.”

“Chaos is een woord dat we hebben uitgevonden voor een orde die we niet begrijpen.”

“What seems nasty, painful, evil can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind.”

“All the men she's been with and now you, just you, and the barges going by, masts and hulls, the whole damned current of life flowing through you, through her, through all the guys behind you and after you, the flowers and the birds and the sun streaming in and the fragrance of it choking you, annihilating you.”

“The trouble with Irene is that she has a valise instead of a cunt. She wantsfat letters to shove in her valise.”

“We create our fate everyday”

“For her were meant those terrible words of Louis-Philippe, "and a night comes when all is over, when so many jaws have closed upon us that we no longer have the strength to stand, and our meat hangs upon our bodies, as though it had been masticated by every mouth.”

“Who but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination? The others - priest, teacher, saint, statesman, warrior - hold us to the path of history. They keep us chained to the rock, that the vultures may eat out our hearts. It is the artist who has the courage to go against the crowd; he is the unrecognized "hero of our time" - and of all time.”

“either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird.”

“It is the obscene horror, the dry, fucked-out aspect of things which makes this crazy civilization look like a crater. It is this great yawning gulf of nothingness which the creative spirits and mothers of the race carry between their legs.”

“Als je verkiest met de kudde mee te lopen ben je immuun. Als je geaccepteerd en geapprecieerd wilt worden moet je jezelf tot een nulliteit maken, jezelf zo maken dat je niet van de kudde te onderscheiden bent. Je mag wel dromen, mits je droomt wat miljoenen anderen tegelijk dromen.”

“ja znam da sloboda znači odgovornost.isto tako znam kako se lako želja može pretvoriti u čin. čak i kad sklopim oči, moram paziti kako sanjam i o čemu, jer samo najtanji veo deli tada san od jave.”

“For there is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self, and for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter.”

“If I am against the condition of the world it is not because I am a moralist, it is because I want to laugh more. I don't say that God is one grand laugh: I say that you've got to laugh hard before you can get anywhere near God. My whole aim in life is to get near to God, that is, to get nearer to myself. That's why it doesn't matter to me what road I take. But music is very important. Music is a tonic for the pineal gland. Music isn't Bach or Beethoven; music is the can opener of the soul. It makes you terribly quiet inside, makes you aware that there's a roof to your being.”

“I used to think a bird couldn't fly if its wings got wet.”

“We are swimming on the face of time and all else has drowned, is drowning, or will drown.”

“I look out again at the sun-my first full gaze. It is blood-red and men are walking about on rooftops. Everything above the horizon is clear to me. It is like Easter Sunday. Death is behind me and birth too. I am going to live now among the life maladies. I am going to live the spiritual life of the pygmy, the secret life of the little man in the wilderness of the bush. Inner and outer have changed places. Equilibrium is no longer the goal-the scales must be destroyed. Let me hear you promise again all those sunny things you carry inside you. Let me try to believe for one day, while I rest in the open, that the sun brings good tidings. Let me rot in splendor while the sun bursts in your womb. I believe all your lies implicitly. I take you as the personification of evil, as the destroyer of the soul, as the maharanee of the night. Tack your womb up on my wall, so that I may remember you. We must get going. Tomorrow, tomorrow...”

“Still I can't get it out of my mind what a discrepancy there is between ideas and living. A permanent dislocation, though we try to cover the two with a bright awning. And it won't go. Ideas have to be wedded to action; if there is no sex, no vitality in them, there is no action. Ideas cannot exist alone in the vacuum of the mind. Ideas are related to living: liver ideas, kidney ideas, interstitial ideas, etc. If it were only for the sake of an idea Copernicus would have smashed the existent macrocosm and Columbus would have foundered in the Sargasso Sea. The aesthetics of the idea breeds flowerpots and flowerpots you put on the window sill. But if there be no rain or sun of what use putting flowerpots outside the window?”

“I have never seen a place like Paris for varieties of sexual provender. as soon as a woman loses a front tooth or an eye or a leg she goes on the lose. In America she'd starve to death if she had nothing to recommend her but a mutilation. Here it is different. A missing tooth or a nose eaten away or a fallen womb, any misfortune that aggravates the natural homeliness of the female, seems to be regarded as an added spice, a stimulant for the jaded appetites of the male.”

“In every room there is a mirror before which he stands attentively and chews his rage, and from the constant chewing, from the grumbling and mumbling and the muttering and cursing his jaws have gotten unhinged and they sag badly and, when he rubs his beard, pieces of his jaw crumble away and he's so disgusted with himself that he stamps on his own jaw, grinds it to bits with his big heels.”

“It was you, you who brought me the pardon. Pee on me, won't you. It would be like benediction. O, what a sleepwalker I have been!”

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

“I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object.”

“Naast dit mensenras bestaat nog een ras van wezens, de onmenselijken, het ras der kunstenaars die, door onbekende impulsen geprikkeld, de levenloze massa van de mensen nemen en door de koortshitte en gisting die zij daarin verwekken dit kleffe deeg in brood veranderen en het brood in wijn en de wijn in zang. Uit dit dode compost en de inerte sintels brengen zij een lied voort dat besmet.”

“Eens heb ik gemeend dat menselijk zijn het hoogste doel was dat een mens kon nastreven, maar nu zie ik in dat dit bedoeld was om me vernietigen. Nu ga ik er trots op te zeggen dat ik onmenselijk ben, dat ik niet tot mensen en regeringen behoor, dat ik niets met geloofsbelijdenissen en principes te maken heb. Ik heb niets uitstaande met de krakende machine der mensheid - ik behoor tot de aarde!”

“De wiegen der beschaving zijn de verpestende riolen van de wereld, het knekelhuis waarin de stinkende baarmoeders hun bloederige pakjes vlees en been toevertrouwen.”

“Zeven jaar lang heb ik dag en nacht met slechts een gedachte voor mijn geest rongelopen - haar. Als er maar een christen was die zo trouw aan zijn God was als ik aan haar, dan zouden we vandaag allemaal Jezus Christus zijn. Dag en nacht dacht ik aan haar, zelfs als ik haar bedroog.”

“In niets onderscheidden ze zich van de heikneuters waar ze later hun voeten op zouden vegen. Het waren nullen in elke betekenis van het woord, nullen die de kern vormen van een fatsoenlijk en jammerlijk burgerdom. Ze sliepen best en klaagde nooit; ze waren niet vrolijk en niet ongelukkig. De onverschilligen die Dante naar het voorportaal van de Hel heeft verwezen. De lui van de bovenlaag.”

“Nije skrivala bilo kakve uznemirujuće tajne; što god se moglo ljudski ubiti, ona bi ubila. Mogla je tako beskrajno poživjeti, jednako kao i mjesec, kao bilo koja mrtva planeta koja zrači hipnotičkim sjajem, diže plimu strasti, nagoni svijet u ludilo, svojim magnetskim, metalnim zracima oduzima boju svim zemaljskim stvarima. Sijući vlastitu smrt, prenosi na svakoga paklensku groznicu. U odvratnoj mirnoći svog sna obnovila je vlastitu magnetsku smrt u dodiru s hladnom magmom pustih planetarnih svjetova.”

“We need good titles.”

“The only difference between the Adamic man and the man of today is that the one was born to Paradise and the other has to create it. ”

“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.”

“I am thinking of one woman and the rest is blotto. I say I am thinking of her, but the truth is I am dying a stellar death. I am lying there like a sick star waiting for the light to go out. Years ago I lay on this same bed and I waited and waited to be born. Nothing happened. Except that my mother, in her Lutheran rage, threw a bucket of water over me. My mother, poor imbecile that she was, thought I was lazy. She didn't know that I had gotten caught in the stellar drift, that I was being pulverized to a black extinction out there in the farthest rim of the universe.”

“All my life I have felt a great kinship with the madman and the criminal. Practically all my life I have dwelt in big cities; I am unhappy, uneasy, unless I am in a big city. My feeling for Nature is limited to water, mountain and desert. These three form a trine which is more imperative, for me, than any spiritual alimentation. But in the city I am aware of another element which is beyond all these in power of fascination: the labyrinth. To be lost in a strange city is the greatest joy I know; to become oriented is to lose everything. To me the city is crime personified, insanity personified. I feel at home.”