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Some Quotes:
- "If at eighty you're not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings), if you can sleep without first taking a pill, if birds and flowers, mountain and sea still inspire you, you are a most fortunate individual… If you are young in years but already weary in spirit, already on the way to becoming an automaton, it may do you good to say to your boss-under your breath of course-"Fuck you, Jack! You don't own me." If you can whistle up your ass, if you can be turned on by a fetching bottom or a lovely pair of teats, if you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive your parents for the crime of bringing you into the world, if you are content to get nowhere, just take each day as it comes, if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from growing sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you've got it half licked."---Sextet
- "Given only half a chance, men will express the best that is in them."-The World of Sex
- "Most people are born blind, deaf and mute. The think that acquiring what is called "Culture" will restore these missing faculties. They learn to recite names-of authors, composers, actors, and so on. They pass these off for the real thing. Lectures, for example, are most important to them: the easy way to imbibe Culture. I have always been leery of Culture."-Book of Friends
- "...that's the only death, that's the real death. Not this death when you depart the body, but being dead while you are alive, that's the real death."-This is Henry, Henry Miller from Brooklyn
- "Usually what is taught in school must be unlearned. Life is the teacher."-The Paintings of Henry Miller: Paint As You Like and Die Happy.
- "The job of discovering things for yourself is far better than learning in school. That's why I am against schools in general.
I tried not to send my children to school when I was in Big Sur but the authorities would not permit it. I believe all schools are destructive. They kill curiosity and the desire to learn."-My Life and Times
- "The evil is in us, in our dissatisfaction with the condition of life we find ourselves in."-The Paris Review
- "I don't believe in health foods and diets. I have probably been eating the wrong things all my life-and have thrived on it. I eat to enjoy food. What I do I do first for enjoyment."-On Turning Eighty
- "As for freedom of thought, freedom to express one's ideas-not to speak of living them out-where is the government which ever permitted this? Conformity is the rule, and conformity will be the rule as long as men believe in governing one another."-Remember to Remember
- "Hope is a bad thing. It means that you are not what you want to be. It means that part of you is dead, if not all of you. It means that you entertain illusions. It's a sort of spiritual clap I should say."-The Cosmological Eye
- "It should be borne in mind that although my heart was breaking, I could still enjoy a good laugh. It was this ability to laugh in spite of everything that saved me. I had already known from experience that famous line from Rabelais-"For all your ills, I give you laughter." I can say from personal experience that it is a piece of the highest wisdom. There is so precious little of it today-it's no wonder the drug pushers and the psychoanalysts are in the saddle."-Book of Friends
- "To lead a life divorced from books and the making of books, to live without sex, without human companionship, is it so dreadful? Even a writer can do it, if he knows how to live with himself. That is what I mean: I have learned to live with myself and like it."-The World of Sex
- "So, whether the world is going to pieces or not, whether you are on the side of the angels or the devil himself, take life for what it is, have fun, spread joy and confusion."-Sextet
- "Even at that tender age I felt that punishment was criminal. I couldn't' understand why people should be punished…I couldn't even understand why God had the right to punish us for our sins. And, of course, as I later realized, God doesn't punish us-we punish ourselves."-The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
- "I don't want to be bitter about life-about love and friendship and all the human, emotional entanglements. I've had more than my share of human disappointments, deprivations, disillusionment. I want to love people and life above all; I want to be able to say always, 'if you feel bitter or disillusioned, there is something wrong with yourself, not with people, not with life.'"-A Literate Passion
- "The situation one finds oneself in is always the situation one has created: we are always at the point or place we desired to be."-Hamlet Letters
- "Sex is impersonal, and may or may not be identified with love. Sex can strengthen and deepen love, or work destructively."-The World of Sex
- "If there is something wrong about our attitude toward sex then there is something wrong about our attitude toward bread, toward money, toward work, toward play, toward everything. How can one enjoy a good sex life if he has a distorted, unhealthy attitude toward other aspects of life?"-The World of Sex
- "It is true I swim in a perpetual sea of sex, but the actual excursions are fairly limited. I think it's more like this-that I'm always ready to love, always hungry to love. I'm talking about love, not just sex. And I don't mind at all saturating my work with it-sex I mean-because I'm not afraid of it and I almost want to stand up and preach about it."-A Literate Passion
- "I don't think much of the sexual revolution in America to be very honest with you. Look, I believe in permissiveness. I believe anything and everything is possible in bed between two people. And that it's nobody's business but theirs. I don't like the way the youngsters have been going about it. Flaunting it. Making a game of it. I've been largely responsible for it, I'm afraid. Because they only read me part way."-Chicago Tribune
- "When I was 21 and I heard Emma Goldman, the anarchist, speak about "free love"-that was the expression then-it sounded good to me. Oh, it was more a question of being able to have sexual relations with the person you were in love with. But today, the way I see it, the word love is sort of omitted. They talk a lot about love-ins and love and love, but I don't feel that the unions between couples are based on a great love for one another. It's more like experimentation. I think this complete freedom doesn't make for something interesting. They're bored very quickly."-This is Henry, Henry Miller from Brooklyn
- "I believe that the ideal condition for humanity would be to live in a state of peace, in brotherly love, but I must confess I know no way to bring such a condition about. I have accepted the fact, hard as it may be, that human beings are inclined to behave in a way that would make animals blush.
The ironic, the tragic thing is that we often behave in ignoble fashion from what we consider the highest motives. The animal makes no excuse for killing his prey; the human animal, on the other hand, can invoke God's blessing when massacring his fellow men. He forgets that God is not on his side but at his side."-Sextet
- "I maintain that advice is futile. One must find out for himself. It sounds cruel, but it isn't."-My Life and Times
- "I don't have a mind that thinks in a straight line. I explode as I think... in many different directions at once."-My Life and Times
- "These analytical individuals... kill whatever (they) see. How much more interesting and instructive it is to ask a child what he thinks of one's work. Often, after a session with intellectual individuals I feel like saying, 'It's your problem. Don't ask me what it means.'"-The Paintings of Henry Miller
- "I have never regretted anything. Regret, like guilt, is a waste of time."-My Life and Times
- "It's been said that we will never have another savior. There have been enough saviors. They have all shown man the way. Now man must save himself."-My Life and Times