891 Quotes by Henry Miller

I was lonely amidst a world of things lit up by phosphorescent flashes of cruelty. I was delirious with an energy which could not be unleashed except in the service of death and futility.

Music is still the antidote for the nameless... Music is planetary fire, an irreducible which is all sufficient; it is the slate-writing of the gods...

In the egocentric prism the helpless victim is walled in by the very light which he refracts. The ego dies in its own glass cage...

A great work of art, if it accomplishes anything, serves to remind us, or let us say to set us dreaming, of all that is fluid and intangible.

Man is not at home in the universe, despite all the efforts of philosophers and metaphysicians to provide a soothing syrup. Thought is still a narcotic. The deepest question is why. And it is a forbidden one. The very asking is in the nature of cosmic sabotage. And the penalty is – the afflictions of Job.

Life becomes a spectacle and, if you happen to be an artist, you record the passing show.

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.

I am so thoroughly healthy and empty. No dreams, no desires. I am like the luscious deceptive fruit which hangs on the Californian trees. One more ray of sun and I will be rotten.

Such a healthy, simple, approving glance as if he were saying to himself: “Ah, spring is coming!” And God knows, when spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise.