Henry Miller (1891-1980)

Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. He broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blends character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn, and the trilogy The Rosy Crucifixion, which are based on his experiences in New York City and Paris, and all of which were banned in the United States until 1961. He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism and painted watercolors.

Quotes

All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.
What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?
One's destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack.

Body
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
We must not just be in the world and above the world, but also of the world. To love it for what it is... is the only task. Avoid it and you are lost. Loose yourself in it, and you are free.
I have no money, no resources, and no hope. I am the happiest man alive.
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.
The thing is to become a master and in your old age to acquire the courage to do what children did when they knew nothing.
Nobody can feel better than the man who is completely taken in. To be intelligent may be a boon, but to be completely trusting, gulible to the point of idiocy, to surrender without reservation, is one of the supreme joys of life.
Life is constantly providing us with new funds, new resources, even when we are reduced to immobility. In life's ledger there is no such thing as frozen assets.
The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous.
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
Living apart and at peace with myself, I came to realize more vividly the meaning of the doctrine of acceptance. To refrain from giving advice, to refrain from meddling in the affairs of others, to refrain, even though the motives be the highest, from tampering with another's way of life - so simple, yet so difficult for an active spirit. Hands off!
When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.
Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate, or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to enduring fact of mystery.
When shit becomes valuable, the poor will be born without assholes.
It's silly to go on pretending that under the skin we are all brothers. The truth is more likely that under the skin we are all cannibals, assassins, traitors, liars, hypocrites, poltroons.
Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.