Henry Miller

“What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.”

“When a desperate, hungry spirit appears and makes the guinea pigs squeal it is because he knows where to put the live wire of sex, because he knows that beneath the hard carapace of indifference there is concealed the ugly gash, the wound that never heals.”

“One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.”

“Out yonder they may curse, revile, and torture one another, defile all the human instincts, make a shambles of creation (if it were in their power), but here, no, here, it is unthinkable, here there is abiding peace, the peace of God, and the serene security created by a handful of good neighbors living at one with the creature world.”

“It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.”

“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.”

“To move forward clinging to the past is like dragging a ball and chain. The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over. We are all guilty of crime, the great crime of not living life to the full. But we are all potentially free. We can stop thinking of what we have failed to do and do whatever lies within our power. What these powers that are in us may be no one has truly dared to imagine. That they are infinite we will realize the day we admit to ourselves that imagination is everything. Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything God-like about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.”

“The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way.”

“The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.”

“Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination.”

“To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.”

“We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.”

“להיות אינטליגנטי זה אולי חסד, אך לבטוח לחלוטין, להתפתות להאמין עד כדי טיפשות, להיכנע ללא סייג, זוהי אחת ההנאות הגדולות של החיים.”

“האדם שמבקש אחר בטחון, אפילו במחשבתו, דומה לאיש אשר יקטע את איבריו ויחליפם באיברים מלאכותיים כדי שלא יחוש בכאב.”

“בנגיסה אחת אתה בולע חמשת אלפים שנים של מרירות, חמשת אלפים שנה של אפר, חמשת אלפים של זמורות שבורות, קליפות ביצים מנופצות, גוזלים חנוקים.”

“לפעמים עדיף שיהיה אויב טוב – אז ברור לנו איפה אנחנו עומדים.”

“להיות שמח פירושו להיות מטורף בעולם של רוחות רפאים עצובות.”

“הבדידות היא מנת חלקו של מי שחי על האדמה, ומכל היצורים האדם הוא הבודד ביותר. יתר על כן, הוא בודד יותר כאשר הוא מוקף בבני מינו.”

“השמחה כמוה כנהר שדבר לא יעצור את מרוצת מימיו.”

“אם נצעד לקראת מציאות נעלה יותר, אישה תראה לנו את הדרך. שלטון הגבר מגיע לקצו כי הוא איבד את המגע עם האדמה.”