“This was the sort of ebullience and élan I prayed for when I felt the desire to write. I used to sit down and wait for this to happen. But it never did happen- not this way. It happened afterwards, sometimes when I had left the machine and gone for a walk. Yes, suddenly it would come on, like an attack, pell-mell, from every direction, a veritable inundation, an avalanche- and there I was, helpless, miles away from the typewriter, not a piece of paper in my pocket.”

American novelist, short story writer, and essayist

Henry Miller was an American novelist, short story writer, and essayist. He became known for reshaping modern prose through semi-autobiographical fiction that mixed personal experience with social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, surreal association, and mysticism. His best-known works in this mode include Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn, and the trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, drawn from his years in New York City and Paris. These books were banned in the United States until 1961. He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and he painted watercolors.