891 Quotes by Henry Miller

The moment I stepped on the American boat which was to take me to New York I felt I was in another world. I was among the go-getters again, among the restless souls, who, not knowing how to live their own life, wish to change the world for everybody.

Nothing that had happened to me thus far had been sufficient to destroy me; nothing had been destroyed except my illusions. I myself was intact. The world was intact.

I struggled in the beginning. I said I was going to write the truth, so help me God. And I thought I was. I found I couldn’t. Nobody can write the absolute truth.

I tried to look earnest, but I only succeeded in looking pathetic.

In the ultimate sense, the world itself is pregnant with failure, is the perfect manifestation of imperfection, of the consciousness of failure. In the realization of this, failure is itself eliminated.

Man will change nothing of his final destiny, which is to return sooner or later to the unconscious and the formless.

The whole world seemed to unroll like a pornographic film whose tragic theme is impotence.

The ten-o’ clock breakfasters began to appear: nervous, little men, morose, preoccupied, who wiped their plates with crusts of bread; rude, massive women who, like primitive idols dug out of the soil, had grown rotten in the years; flowery dandies with repulsive faces, reminding him uncomfortably of illustrations in medical tracts.

Words are loneliness. I left a couple of words for you on the tablecloth last night – you covered them with your elbows.