891 Quotes by Henry Miller

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.

This isn’t the place to complain about the punctilio of prison regimes. I know that they have to take every precaution. All I wish to convey is the effect which this individual had upon me. Months have passed since the incident and yet I can’t forget his face, his manner, his whole being. He’s a man, and I say it calmly and soberly, whom I could kill in cold blood. I could shoot him down in the dark and go quietly about my business, as if I had just brushed a mosquito off my arm.

Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty.

If I am a hyena I am a lean and hungry one: I go forth to fatten myself.

Taboos, though unadmitted, are potent. What is it that people fear? What they don’t understand. The civilized man is not a whit different from the savage in this respect. 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.

I will sing while you croak.

To taste it once is to taste it forever – life or death. Whichever way the coin flips is right, so long as you hold no stakes.

I even like your deceit, your treachery. It seems aristocratic to me.

Passing beneath the dance hall, thinking again of this book, I realized suddenly that our life had come to an end: I realized that the book I was planning was nothing more than a tomb in which to bury her – and the me which had belonged to her. That was some time ago, and ever since I have been trying to write it. Why is it so difficult? Why? Because the idea of an “end” is intolerable to me.