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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.

-Henry Miller

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I Struggled In The

Henry Miller

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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.

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My World Of Human Beings Had Perished. I Was Utterly Alone In The World And For Friends I Had The Streets, And The Streets Spoke To Me In That Sad, Bitter Language Compounded Of Human Misery, Yearning, Regret, Failure, Wasted Effort

I Wanted To Feel The Blood Running Back Into My Veins, Even At The Cost Of Annihilation. I Wanted To Shake The Stone And Light Out Of My System. I Wanted The Dark Fecundity Of Nature, The Deep Well Of The Womb, Silence, Or Else The Lapping Of The Black Waters Of Death. I Wanted To Be That Night Which The Remorseless Eye Illuminated, A Night Diapered With Stars And Trailing Comets. To Be Of Night So Frighteningly Silent, So Utterly Incomprehensible And Eloquent At The Same Time. Never More To Speak Or To Listen Or To Think.

To The Man Whose Senses Are Alive And Alert There Is Not Even The Need To Stir From One's Threshold.

Why Change The World? Change Worlds!

There Are Lone Figures Armed Only With Ideas, Sometimes With Just One Idea, Who Blast Away Whole Epochs In Which We Are Enwrapped Like Mummies. Some Are Powerful Enough To Resurrect The Dead. Some Steal On Us Unawares And Put A Spell Over Us Which It Takes Centuries To Throw Off. Some Put A Curse On Us, For Our St Idity And Inertia, And Then It Seems As If God Himself Were Unable To Lift It.

The Monstrous Thing Is Not That Men Have Created Roses Out Of This Dung Heap, But That, For Some Reason Or Other, They Should Want Roses.

The World Isn't Kept Running Because It's A Paying Proposition. (god Doesn't Make A Cent On The Deal.) The World Goes On Because A Few Men In Every Generation Believe In It Utterly, Accept It Unquestioningly; They Underwrite It With Their Lives.

I Read To Be Taken Out Of Myself, To Become Ecstatic.

All Growth Is A Leap In The Dark.

This Is Not A Book In The Ordinary Sense Of The Word. No, This Is A Prolonged Insult, A Gob Of Spit In The Face Of Art, A Kick In The Pants To God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty... What You Will.

The Dreamer Whose Dreams Are Non-utilitarian Has No Place In This World. In This World The Poet Is Anathema, The Thinker A Fool, The Artist An Escapist, The Man Of Vision A Criminal.

He Is Trying To Recapture His Innocence, Yet All He Succeeds In Doing (by Writing) Is To Inoculate The World With A Virus Of His Disillusionment.

The Englishman, Be It Noted, Seldom Resorts To Violence; When He Is Sufficiently Goaded He Simply Opens Up, Like The Oyster, And Devours His Adversary.

All Growth Is A Leap In The Dark, A Spontaneous Unpremeditated Act Without Benefit Of Experience.

Imagination Is The Voice Of Daring. If There Is Anything Godlike About God It Is That. He Dared To Imagine Everything.

Example Moves The World More Than Doctrine. The Great Exemplars Are The Poets Of Action, And It Makes Little Difference Whether They Be Forces For Good Or Forces For Evil.

I Demanded A Realm In Which I Should Be Both Master And Slave At The Same Time: The World Of Art Is The Only Such Realm.

It Isn't The Oceans Which Cut Us Off From The World - It's The American Way Of Looking At Things.

I Took Care Of My Wheel As One Would Look After A Rolls Royce. If It Needed Repairs I Always Brought It To The Same Shop On Myrtle Avenue Run By A Negro Named Ed Perry. He Handled The Bike With Kid Gloves, You Might Say. He Would Always See To It That Neither Front Nor Back Wheel Wobbled. Often He Would Do A Job For Me Without Pay, Because, As He Put It, He Never Saw A Man So In Love With His Bike As I Was.

You Can Look At Things All Your Life And Not See Them Really. This ‘seeing’ Is, In A Way, A ‘not Seeing,’ If You Follow Me. It Is More Of A Search For Something, In Which, Being Blindfolded, You Develop The Tactile, The Olfactory, The Auditory Senses —and Thus See For The First Time.

The Real Enemy Can Always Be Met And Conquered, Or Won Over. Real Antagonism Is Based On Love, A Love Which Has Not Recognized Itself.

Do Anything, But Let It Produce Joy. Do Anything, But Let It Yield Ecstasy.

Your Nearness Is The Nearness Of Planets. I Am The Void Between You. If I Withdraw There Will Be No Void For You To Swim In.

We Should Not Stop To Reflect, Compare, Analyze, Possess, But Flow On And Through, Endlessly, Like Music.

Were There A Christian So Faithful To His God As I Was To Her We Would All Be Jesus Christ Today.

If We Have Not Found Heaven Within, It Is A Certainty We Will Not Find It Without.

For A Hundred Years Or More The World, Our World, Has Been Dying. And Not One Man, In These Last Hundred Years Or So, Has Been Crazy Enough To Put A Bomb Up The Asshole Of Creation And Set It Off. The World Is Rotting Away, Dying Piecemeal. But It Needs The Coup De Grace, It Needs To Be Blown To Smithereens. Not One Of Us Is Intact, And Yet We Have In Us All The Continents And The Seas Between The Continents And The Birds Of The Air. We Are Going To Put It Down ― The Evolution Of This World Which Has Died But Which Has Not Been Buried.

The Only Peace, The Only Security, Is In Fulfillment.

Until We Lose Ourselves There Is No Hope Of Finding Ourselves.

I Feel That America Is Essentially Against The Artist, That The Enemy Of America Is The Artist, Because He Stands For Individuality And Creativeness, And That's Un-american Somehow.

Develop An Interest In Life As You See It.

Interest In Life

The Teutons Have Been Singing The Swan Song Ever Since They Entered The Ranks Of History. They Have Always Confounded Truth With Death.

Have You Ever Seen A Genius Out There Looking For A Job? It's The Saddest Thing In The World. No One Will Hire Him. There Is Only One Place Where He Is Always Welcome- At The Bottom.

Los Angeles Gives One The Feeling Of The Future More Strongly Than Any City I Know Of. A Bad Future, Too, Like Something Out Of Fritz Lang's Feeble Imagination.

I Had Learned To Harness Ignorance With Presumption. I Was Ready To Become An Unacknowledged Watercolorist.

We Kill Because We Are Afraid Of Our Own Shadow, Afraid That If We Used A Little Common Sense We'd Have To Admit That Our Glorious Principles Were Wrong.

The World Itself Is Pregnant With Failure, Is The Perfect Manifestation Of Imperfection, Of The Consciousness Of Failure.

Hitler Is No Worse, Nay Better, In My Opinion, Than The Other Lugs. He Makes The German Mistake Of Being Tactless, That's All.

The Word Civilization To My Mind Is Coupled With Death. When I Use The Word, I See Civilization As A Crippling, Thwarting Thing, A Stultifying Thing. For Me It Was Always So. I Don't Believe In The Golden Ages, You See... Civilization Is The Arteriosclerosis Of Culture.

Each Man Has His Own Way Of Being Himself And Of Saying It So Ultimately That He Can't Be Denied.

The Only Law Which Is Really Lived Up To Wholeheartedly And With A Vengeance Is The Law Of Conformity.

I Had A Microscopic Eye For The Blemish, For The Grain Of Ugliness Which To Me Constituted The Sole Beauty Of The Object.

What I Secretly Longed For Was To Disentangle Myself Of All Those Lives Which Had Woven Themselves Into The Pattern Of My Own Life And Were Making My Destiny A Part Of Theirs. To Shake Myself Free Of These Accumulating Experiences Which Were Mine Only By Force Of Inertia Required A Violent Effort. Now And Then I Lunged And Tore At The Net, But Only To Become More Enmeshed. My Liberation Seemed To Involve Pain And Suffering To Those Near And Dear To Me. Every Move I Made For My Own Private Good Brought About Reproach And Condemnation. I Was A Traitor A Thousand Times Over.

Forget The Books You Want To Write. Think Only Of The Book You Are Writing.

I Felt Free And Chained At The Same Time - Like One Feels Just Before Election, When All The Crooks Have Been Nominated And You Are Beseeched To Vote For The Right Man.

We Are All Part Of Creation, All Kings, All Poets, All Musicians; We Have Only To Open Up, Only To Discover What Is Already There.

There Is Only One Thing Which Interests Me Vitally Now, And That Is The Recording Of All That Which Is Omitted In Books

Writing Is Its Own Reward.

It Is No Accident That Propels People Like Us To Paris. Paris Is Simply An Artificial Stage, A Revolving Stage That Permits The Spectator To Glimpse All Phases Of The Conflict. Of Itself Paris Initiates No Dramas. They Are Begun Elsewhere. Paris Is Simply An Obstetrical Instrument That Tears The Living Embryo From The Womb And Puts It In The Incubator.

When I Think Of New York I Have A Very Different Feeling. New York Makes Even A Rich Man Feel His Unimportance. New York Is Cold, Glittering, Malign. The Buildings Dominate. There Is A Sort Of Atomic Frenzy To The Activity Going On; The More Furious The Pace, The More Diminished The Spirit. A Constant Ferment, But It Might Just As Well Be Going On In A Test Tube. Nobody Knows What It's All About. Nobody Directs The Energy. Stupendous. Bizarre, Baffling. A Tremendous Reactive Urge, But Absolutely Uncoordinated.

All The Lies And Evasions By Which Man Has Nourished Himself Civilization, In A Word Is The Fruits Of The Creative Artist. It Is The Creative Nature Of Man Which Has Refused To Let Him Lapse Back Into That Unconscious Unity With Life Which Characterizes The Animal World From Which He Made His Escape.

The Great Work Must Inevitably Be Obscure, Except To The Very Few, To Those Who Like The Author Himself Are Initiated Into The Mysteries. Communication Then Is Secondary: It Is Perpetuation Which Is Important. For This Only One Good Reader Is Necessary.

We Have Two American Flags Always: One For The Rich And One For The Poor. When The Rich Fly It Means That Things Are Under Control; When The Poor Fly It Means Danger, Revolution, Anarchy.

Moralities, Ethics, Laws, Customs, Beliefs, Doctrines - These Are Of Trifling Import. All That Matters Is That The Miraculous Become The Norm.

Part Of The Act Of Creating Is In Discovering Your Own Kind. They Are Everywhere. But Don't Look For Them In The Wrong Places.

The Poem Is The Dream Made Flesh, In A Two-fold Sense: As Work Of Art, And As Life, Which Is A Work Of Art.

I Think Someday You're Going To Be A Great Writer," He Said. "but" He Added Maliciously, "first You'll Have To Suffer A Bit. I Mean Really Suffer, Because You Don't Know What The Word Means Yet. You Only Think You've Suffered. You've Got To Fall In Love First.

Falling In Love

The Most Wonderful Opportunity Which Life Offers Is To Be Human.

Reality Is Not Protected Or Defended By Laws, Proclamations, Ukases, Cannons And Armadas. Reality Is That Which Is Sprouting All The Time Out Of Death And Disintegration.

The Vast Difference Between Astrology And Other Sciences, If I May Put It Thus, Is That Astrology Deals Not With Facts But With Profundities. The Solid Ground On Which The Scientist Pretends To Rest Gives Way, In Astrology, To Imponderables.

The Loss Of Sex Polarity Is Part And Parcel Of The Larger Disintegration, The Reflex Of The Soul's Death, And Coincident With The Disappearance Of Great Men, Great Deeds, Great Causes, Great Wars, Etc.

The Prisoner Is Not The One Who Has Commited A Crime, But The One Who Clings To His Crime And Lives It Over And Over.

You Must Be Life For Me To The Very End," So He Writes. "that Is The Only Way In Which To Sustain My Idea Of You. Because You Have Gotten, As You See, Tied Up With Something So Vital To Me, I Do Not Think I Shall Ever Shake You Off. Nor Do I Wish To. I Want You To Live More Vitally Every Day, As I Am Dead. That Is Why, When I Speak Of You To Others, I Am Just A Bit Ashamed. It's Hard To Talk Of One's Self So Intimately

That We Cannot Rise Equal To Situations When We Are In Them — That Is The Tragedy Of Life.

No, There's Fifteen Francs Somewhere, Which Nobody Gives A Damn About Anymore And Which Nobody Is Going To Get In The End Anyhow, But The Fifteen Francs Is Like The Primal Cause Of Things And Rather Than Listen To One's Own Voice, Rather Than Walk Out On The Primal Cause, One Surrenders To The Situation, One Goes On Butchering And Butchering And The More Cowardly One Feels The More Heroically Does He Behave, Until A Day When The Bottom Drops Out And Suddenly All The Guns Are Silenced And The Stretcher-bearers Pick Up The Maimed And Bleeding Heroes And Pin Medals On Their Chest.

The Cancer Of Time Is Eating Us Away

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.

For One Crime Which Is Expiated In Prison Ten Thousand Are Committed Thoughtlessly By Those Who Condemn.

She May Be Lying In Bed Reading A Book, She May Be Making Love With A Prize Fighter, Or She May Be Running Like Mad Through A Field Of Stubble, One Shoe One, One Shoe Off, A Man Named Corn Cob Pursuing Her Hotly. Wherever She Is I Am Standing In Complete Darkness; Her Absence Blots Me Out.

I Too Love Everything That Flows: Rivers, Sewers, Lava, Semen, Blood, Bile, Words, Sentences. I Love The Amniotic Fluid When It Spills Out Of The Bag. I Love The Kidney With It's Painful Gall-stones, It's Gravel And What-not; I Love The Urine That Pours Out Scalding And The Clap That Runs Endlessly; I Love The Words Of Hysterics And The Sentences That Flow On Like Dysentery And Mirror All The Sick Images Of The Soul.

Even The Idiot May Have A Message For Us

The Study Of Crime Begins With The Knowledge Of Oneself. All That You Despise, All That You Loathe, All That You Reject, All That You Condemn And Seek To Convert By Punishment Springs From You.

I Believe In Saying The Truth, Coming Out With It Cold, Shocking If Necessary, Not Disguising It.

The Life Of A Creator Is Not The Only Life Nor Perhaps The Most Interesting Which A Man Leads. There Is A Time For Play And A Time For Work, A Time For Creation And A Time For Lying Fallow. And There Is A Time, Glorious Too In Its Own Way, When One Scarcely Exists, When One Is A Complete Void. I Mean-when Boredom Seems The Very Stuff Of Life.

I'd Rather Sit Down And Write A Letter Than Call Someone Up. I Hate The Telephone.

And The Books You Write. They're Not You. They're Not Me Sitting Here, This Henry Miller. They Belong To Someone Else. It's Terrible. You Can Never Rest.

We Must Be Holy Without Holiness. We Must Be Whole, Complete. That's Being Holy. Any Other Kind Of Holiness Is False, A Snare, And A Delusion.

What Is An Artist? He's A Man Who Has Antennae, Who Knows How To Hook Up To The Currents Which Are In Atmosphere, In The Cosmos.

It Is Now The Fall Of My Second Year In Paris. I Was Sent Here For A Reason I Have Not Yet Been Able To Fathom. I Have No Money, No Resources, No Hopes. I Am The Happiest Man Alive. A Year Ago, Six Months Ago, I Thought I Was An Artist. I No Longer Think About It. I Am. There Are No More Books To Be Written, Thank God.

Develop An Interest In Life As You See It; The People, Things, Literature, Music - The World Is So Rich, Simply Throbbing With Rich Treasures, Beautiful Souls And Interesting People. Forget Yourself.

Everyman, When He Gets Quiet, When He Becomes Desperately Honest With Himself, Is Capable Of Uttering Profound Truths.

Do Not Be Duped By Little Duties. Do Not Be A Chore Man All Your Days.

The Goal Of Life Is Not To Possess Power But To Radiate It.

Back Of Every Creation, Supporting It Like An Arch, Is Faith. Enthusiasm Is Nothing: It Comes And Goes. But If One Believes, Then Miracles Occur.

The Learning We Received Only Tended To Obscure Our Vision. From The Day We Went To School We Learned Nothing; On The Contrary, We Were Made Obtuse, We Were Wrapped In A Fog Of Words And Abstractions.

Until It Is Kindled By A Spirit As Flamingly Alive As The One Which Gave It Birth A Book Is Dead To Us. Words Divested Of Their Magic Are But Dead Hieroglyphs.

Art Is Only A Means To Life, The Life More Abundant. It Merely Points The Way.

For There Is Only One Great Adventure And That Is Inward Toward The Self, And For That, Time Nor Space Nor Even Deeds Matter.

What Have We To Offer The World Beside The Superabundant Loot Which We Recklessly Plunder From The Earth Under The Maniacal Delusion That This Insane Activity Represents Progress And Enlightenment?

Perhaps I Am Still Very Much Of An American. That Is To Say, Naïve, Optimistic, Gullible. In The Eyes Of A European, What Am I But An American To The Core, An American Who Exposes His Americanism Like A Sore. Like It Or Not, I Am A Product Of This Land Of Plenty, A Believer In Superabundance, A Believer In Miracles.

I Need To Be Alone. I Need To Ponder My Shame And My Despair In Seclusion; I Need The Sunshine And The Paving Stones Of The Streets Without Companions, Without Conversation, Face To Face With Myself, With Only The Music Of My Heart For Company.

Think Only What Is Right There, What Is Right Under Your Nose To Do. It's Such A Simple Thing - That's Why People Can't Do It.

Perhaps I Have Not Lined His Portrait Too Clearly. But If He Exists, If Only For The Reason That I Have Imagined Him To Be. He Came From The Blue And Returns To The Blue. He Has Not Perished, He Is Not Lost. Neither Will He Be Forgotten.

Every Man With A Bellyful Of The Classics Is An Enemy To The Human Race.

To Make Living Itself An Art, That Is The Goal.

I Used To Think A Bird Couldn't Fly If Its Wings Got Wet.

I'm An Egotist, But I'm Not Selfish. There's A Difference. I'm A Neurotic, I Guess. I Can't Stop Thinking About Myself. It Isn't That I Think Myself So Important. I Simply Can't Think About Anything Else, That's All.

Falling In Love

I Found That What I Had Desired All My Life Was Not To Live - If What Others Are Doing Is Called Living - But To Express Myself.

Example Moves The World More Than Doctrine.

At The Bottom Of Every Frozen Heart There Is A Drop Or Two Of Love―just Enough To Feed The Birds.

It Is Our Destiny To Live With The Wrong As Well As The Right Kind Of Citizens, And To Learn From Them, The Wrong-minded Ones, As Much Or More As From Others. If We Have Not Yet Succeeded -after How Many Centuries?- In Eliminating From Life The Elements Which Plague Us Perhaps We Need To Question Life More Closely. Perhaps Our Refusal To Face Reality Is The Only Ill We Suffer From, And All The Rest But Illusion And Delusion. (p.26)

I Had No More Need Of God Than He Had Of Me, And If There Were One, I Often Said To Myself, I Would Meet Him Calmly And Spit In His Face.

To Be Cured, We Must Rise From Our Graves And Throw Off The Cerements Of The Dead. Nobody Can Do It For Another - It Is A Private Affair Which Is Best Done Collectively. We Must Die As Egos And Be Born Again In The Swarm, Not Separated And Self-hypnotized, But Individual And Related.

The Moment One Is On The Side Of Life; Peace And Security Drop Out Of Consciousness. The Only Peace, The Only Security, Is In Fulfillment.

New York! The White Prisons, The Sidewalks Swarming With Maggots, The Breadlines, The Opium Joints That Are Built Like Palaces, The Kikes That Are There, The Lepers, The Thugs, And Above All, The Ennui, The Monotony Of Faces, Streets, Legs, Houses, Skyscrapers, Meals, Posters, Jobs, Crimes, Loves... A Whole City Erected Over A Hollow Pit Of Nothingness. Meaningless. Absolute Meaningless.

There Will Be More Calamities, More Death, More Despair. Not The Slightest Indication Of A Change Anywhere. The Cancer Of Our Time Is Eating Us Away. Our Heroes Have Killed Themselves, Or Are Killing Themselves.

For The Moment I Can Think Of Nothing— Except That I Am A Sentient Being Stabbed By The Miracle Of These Waters That Reflect A Forgotten World.

If Any Man Dared To Translate All That Is In His Heart, To Put Down What Is Really His Experience, What Is Truly His Truth, I Think Then The World Would Go To Smash, That It Would Be Blown To Smithereens And No God, No Accident, No Will Could Ever Again Assemble The Pieces, The Atoms, The Indestructible Elements That Have Gone To Make Up The World.

When You Come, Please Be So Kind As To Check Your Neuroses And Psychoses At The Gate... Fans And Other Obnoxious Pests Would Do Well To Maintain Silence.

Paint What You Like And Die Happy

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.

Surrealism Is Merely The Reflection Of The Death Process. It Is One Of The Manifestations Of A Life Becoming Extinct, A Virus Which Quickens The Inevitable End.

We're Creators By Permission, By Grace As It Were. No One Creates Alone, Of And By Himself. An Artist Is An Instrument That Registers Something Already Existent, Something Which Belongs To The Whole World, And Which, If He Is An Artist, He Is Compelled To Give Back To The World.

An Artist Earns The Right To Call Himself A Creator Only When He Admits To Himself That He Is But An Instrument.

When Into The Womb Of Time Everything Is Again Withdrawn Chaos Will Be Restored And Chaos Is The Score Upon Which Reality Is Written.

We Must Get Going. Tomorrow, Tomorrow.

Certainly Paradise, Whatever, Wherever It Be, Contains Flaws. (paradisical Flaws, If You Like.) If It Did Not, It Would Be Incapable Of Drawing The Hearts Of Men Or Angels.

I Had To Learn To Think, Feel, And See In A Totally New Fashion, In An Uneducated Way, In My Own Way, Which Is The Hardest Thing In The World. I Had To Throw Myself Into The Current, Knowing That I Would Probably Sink. The Great Majority Of Artists Are Throwing Themselves In With Life Preservers Around Their Necks, And More Often Than Not It Is The Life Preserver, Which Sinks Them. Nobody Can Drown In The Ocean Of Reality Who Voluntarily Gives Herself Up To The Experience. Whatever There Be Of Progress In Life Comes Not Through Adaptation But Through Daring, Through Obeying The Blind Urge.

Topographically The Country Is Magnificent - And Terrifying. Why Terrifying? Because Nowhere Else In The World Is The Divorce Between Man And Nature So Complete. Nowhere Have I Encountered Such A Dull, Monotonous Fabric Of Life As Here In America. Here Boredom Reaches Its Peak.

What Are Our Conductors Giving Us Year After Year? Only Fresh Corpses. Over These Beautifully Embalmed Sonatas, Toccatas, Symphonies And Operas The Public Dance The Jitterbug. Night And Day Without Let The Radio Drowns Us In A Hog-wash Of The Most Nauseating, Sentimental Ditties. From The Churches Comes The Melancholy Dirge Of The Dead Christ, A Music Which Is No More Sacred Than A Rotten Turnip.

In The Beginning Was The Word. Man Acts It Out. He Is The Act, Not The Actor.

Creation Of Man

The Study Of Crime Begins With The Knowledge Of Oneself.

We Live In The Mind, In Ideas, In Fragments. We No Longer Drink In The Wild Outer Music Of The Streets - We Remember Only.

Everybody Says Sex Is Obscene. The Only True Obscenity Is War.

Until He [man] Has Become Fully Human, Until He Learns To Conduct Himself As A Member Of The Earth, He Will Continue To Create Gods Who Will Destroy Him. The Tragedy Of Greece Lies Not In The Destruction Of A Great Culture But In The Abortion Of A Great Vision.

I Didn't Have To Think Up So Much As A Comma Or A Semicolon; It Was All Given, Straight From The Celestial Recording Room. Weary, I Would Beg For A Break, An Intermission, Time Enough, Let's Say, To Go To The Toilet Or Take A Breath Of Fresh Air On The Balcony. Nothing Doing!

Of Course You Don't Die. Nobody Dies. Death Doesn't Exist. You Only Reach A New Level Of Vision, A New Realm Of Consciousness, A New Unknown World.

The American White Man (not To Speak Of The Indian, The Negro, The Mexican) Hasn't A Ghost Of A Chance. If He Has Any Talent He's Doomed To Have It Crushed One Way Or Another. The American Way Is To Seduce A Man By Bribery And Make A Prostitute Of Him. Or Else To Ignore Him, Starve Him Into Submission And Make A Hack Of Him.

Plots And Character Don't Make Life. Life Is Here And Now, Anytime You Say The Word, Anytime You Let Her Rip.

The Man Who Is Intoxicated With Life Does Not Pass Judgment, Does Not Seek To Come To A Conclusion, Does Not Impose His Message On The World.

From The Little Reading I Had Done I Had Observed That The Men Who Were Most In Life, Who Were Molding Life, Who Were Life Itself, Ate Little, Slept Little, Owned Little Or Nothing. They Had No Illusions About Duty, Or The Perpetuation Of Their Kith And Kin, Or The Preservation Of The State. They Were Interested In Truth And In Truth Alone. They Recognized Only One Kind Of Activity - Creation.

She Rises Up Out Of A Sea Of Faces And Embraces Me, Embraces Me Passionately--- A Thousand Eyes, Noses, Fingers, Legs, Bottles, Windows, Purses, Saucers All Glaring At Us An We In Each Other's Arm Oblivious. I Sit Down Beside Her And She Talks--- A Flood Of Talk. Wild Consumptive Notes Of Hysteria, Perversion, Leprosy. I Hear Not A Word Because She Is Beautiful And I Love Her And Now I Am Happy And Willing To Die.

Every Man Has His Own Destiny: The Only Imperative Is To Follow It, To Accept It, No Matter Where It Leads Him.

I Believe That Today More Than Ever A Book Should Be Sought After Even If It Has Only One Great Page In It. We Must Search For Fragments, Splinters, Toenails, Anything That Has Ore In It, Anything That Is Capable Of Resuscitating The Body And The Soul.

Who Hates The Jews More Than The Jew?

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.

The Purpose Of Life Is To Remember.

Man, As Man, Has Never Realized Himself. The Greater Part Of Him, His Potential Being, Has Always Been Submerged. What Is History If Not The Endless Story Of His Repeated Failures?

Surely Every One Realizes, At Some Point Along The Way, That He Is Capable Of Living A Far Better Life Than The One He Has Chosen.

What Holds The World Together, As I Have Learned From Bitter Experience, Is Sexual Intercourse.

I Made Up My Mind That I Would Hold Onto Nothing, That I Would Expect Nothing.

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 Anothers Way Of Life-so Simple, Yet So Difficult For An Active Spirit. Hands Off.

The Man Who Looks For Security, Even In The Mind, Is Like A Man Who Would Chop Off His Limbs In Order To Have Artificial Ones Which Will Give Him No Pain Or Trouble.

The Practice Of Any Art Demands More Than 'mere Savoir Faire'. One Must Not Only Be In Love With What One Does, One Must Also Know How To Make Love. In Love Self Is Obliterated. Only The Beloved Counts.

Remorse Is Impotence; It Will Sin Again. Only Repentance Is Strong - It Can End Everything.

Destiny Is What You Are Supposed To Do In Life. Fate Is What Kicks You In The Ass To Make You Do It.

Life, As We All Know, Is Conflict, And Man, Being Part Of Life, Is Himself An Expression Of Conflict. If He Recognizes The Fact And Accepts It, He Is Apt, Despite The Conflict, To Know Peace And To Enjoy It. But To Arrive At This End, Which Is Only A Beginning (for We Haven’t Begun To Live Yet!), A Man Has Got To Learn The Doctrine Of Acceptance, That Is, Of Unconditional Surrender, Which Is Love.

The Blind Lead The Blind. It's The Democratic Way.

When You Can't Create You Can Work

The World Dies Over And Over Again, But The Skeleton Always Gets Up And Walks.

There Is Nothing In Itself Which Is Wrong Or Evil Not Even Murder.

Voyages Are Accomplished Inwardly.

Obscenity Is A Cleansing Process, Whereas Pornography Only Adds To The Murk.

My Understanding Of The Meaning Of A Book Is That The Book Itself Disappears From Sight, That It Is Chewed Alive, Digested And Incorporated Into The System As Flesh And Blood Which In Turn Creates New Spirit And Reshapes The World.

Analysis Brings No Curative Powers In Its Train; It Merely Makes Us Conscious Of The Existence Of An Evil, Which, Oddly Enough, Is Consciousness.

For A Metaphysical Treat Stop At The Big Sur Inn, Which Is Also A Haven For Stray Cats And Dogs. Life Along The South Coast Is Just A Bed Of Roses, With A Few Thorns And Nettles Interspersed.

We Have Been Educated To Such A Fine - Or Dull - Point That We Are Incapable Of Enjoying Something New, Something Different, Until We Are First Told What It's All About. We Don't Trust Our Five Senses; We Rely On Our Critics And Educators, All Of Whom Are Failures In The Realm Of Creation. In Short, The Blind Lead The Blind. It's The Democratic Way.

The Earth Is Not A Lair, Neither Is It A Prison. The Earth Is A Paradise, The Only One We'll Ever Know. We Will Realize It The Moment We Open Our Eyes. We Don't Have To Make It A Paradise-it Is One. We Have Only To Make Ourselves Fit To Inhabit It. The Man With The Gun, The Man With Murder In His Heart, Cannot Possibly Recognize Paradise Even When He Is Shown It.

Life Is 440 Horsepower In A 2-cylinder Engine.

Sin, Guilt, Neurosis; They Are One And The Same, The Fruit Of The Tree Of Knowledge.

The Only Difference Between The Adamic Man And The Man Of Today Is That The One Was Born To Paradise And The Other Has To Create It.

New York Has A Trip-hammer Vitality Which Drives You Insane With Restlessness If You Have No Inner Stabilizer.

With This Book In My Hands, Reading Aloud To My Friends, Questioning Them, Explaining To Them, I Was Made Clearly To Understand That I Had No Friends, That I Was Alone In The World. Because In Not Understanding The Meaning Of The Words, Neither I Nor My Friends, One Thing Became Very Clear And That Was That There Were Ways Of Not Understanding And That The Difference Between The Non-understanding Of One Individual And The Non-understanding Of Another Created A World Of Terra Firma Even More Solid Than Differences Of Understanding.

One Can See Now How The Idea Of Heaven Takes Hold Of Men's Consciousness, How It Gains Ground Even When All The Props Have Been Knocked From Under It. There Must Be Another World Beside This Swamp In Which Everything Is Dumped Pell-mell. It's Hard To Imagine What It Can Be Like, This Heaven That Men Dream About.

Leave Out The Parts That Readers Tend To Skip.

The Concert Is A Polite Form Of Self Induced Torture.

A Man Writes To Throw Off The Poison Which He Has Accumulated Because Of His False Way Of Life. He Is Trying To Recapture His Innocence, Yet All He Succeeds In Doing (by Writing) Is To Inoculate The World With A Virus Of His Disillusionment. No Man Would Set A Word Down On Paper If He Had The Courage To Live Out What He Believed In.

The City Grows Like A Cancer; I Must Grow Like A Sun. The City Eats Deeper And Deeper Into The Red; It Is An Insatiable White Louse Which Must Die Eventually Of Inanition. I Am Going To Starve The White Louse Which Is Eating Me Up. I Am Going To Die As A City In Order To Become Again A Man. Therefore I Close My Ears, My Eyes, My Mouth.

Either You Take In Believing In Miracles Or You Stand Still Like The Hummingbird.

You Have To Write A Million Words Before You Find Your Voice As A Writer.

Music Is A Beautiful Opiate, If You Don't Take It Too Seriously.

The City Is Loveliest When The Sweet Death Racket Begins. Her Own Life Lived In Defiance Of Nature, Her Electricity, Her Frigidaires, Her Soundproof Walls, The Glint Of Lacquered Nails, The Plumes That Wave Across The Corrugated Sky. Here In The Coffin Depths Grow The Everlasting Flowers Sent By Telegraph.

Without A Coca-cola Life Is Unthinkable.

Prayers Are Offered Up Daily - Without Charge... Refreshments Are Served When Demanded.

Sex Is One Of The Nine Reasons For Reincarnation... The Other Eight Are Unimportant.

History Is The Myth, The True Myth, Of Man's Fall Made Manifest In Time.

The City Of New York Is Like An Enormous Citadel, A Modern Carcassonne. Walking Between The Magnificent Skyscrapers One Feels The Presence On The Fringe Of A Howling, Raging Mob, A Mob With Empty Bellies, A Mob Unshaven And In Rags.

The Piano Bar Is The Gateway To The Halls Of Masturbation.

If I Am Against The Condition Of The World It Is Not Because I Am A Moralist, It Is Because I Want To Laugh More. I Don't Say That God Is One Grand Laugh: I Say That You've Got To Laugh Hard Before You Can Get Anywhere Near God. My Whole Aim In Life Is To Get Near To God, That Is, To Get Nearer To Myself. That's Why It Doesn't Matter To Me What Road I Take. But Music Is Very Important. Music Is A Tonic For The Pineal Gland. Music Isn't Bach Or Beethoven; Music Is The Can Opener Of The Soul. It Makes You Terribly Quiet Inside, Makes You Aware That There's A Roof To Your Being.

And For That One Moment Of Freedom You Have To Listen To All That Love Crap... It Drive Me Nuts Sometimes... I Want To Kick Them Out Immediately... I Do Now And Then. But That Doesn't Keep Them Away. They Like It, In Fact. The Less You Notice Them The More They Chase After You. There's Something Perverse About Women... They're All Masochists At Heart.

At Epidaurus, In The Stillness, In The Great Peace That Came Over Me, I Heard The Heart Of The World Beat. I Know What The Cure Is: It Is To Give Up, To Relinquish, To Surrender, So That Our Little Hearts May Beat In Unison With The Great Heart Of The World.

Hell Is Probably Quite Similar To Most Paris Bistros ... A Bit Overheated, Somewhat Too Crowded, And A Little Too Noisy For My Tastes. The Waiters Will Surely Treat You Rudely And The Cashiers Will Always Add A Few Extra Francs To Your Bill But ... And This Is The Important Part ... The Food Will Be Marvelous.

It Is Almost Banal To Say So Yet It Needs To Be Stressed Continually: All Is Creation, All Is Change, All Is Flux, All Is Metamorphosis.

How Different The New Order Would Be If We Could Consult The Veteran Instead Of The Politician.

You Start Out With The Sublime And You End Up In An Alley Jerking Away For Dear Life.

Better To Separate Than Never To Marry.

Whatever Needs To Be Maintained Through Force Is Doomed.

Every Time You Come To The Limit Of What Is Demanded Of You, You Are Faced With The Same Problem-to Be Yourself!

Real Love Is Never Perplexed, Never Qualifies, Never Rejects, Never Demands. It Replenishes, By Grace Of Restoring Unlimited Circulation. It Burns, Because It Knows The True Meaning Of Sacrifice. It Is Life Illuminated.

The Artist Is The Opposite Of The Politically Minded Individual, The Opposite Of The Reformer, The Opposite Of The Idealist. The Artist Does Not Tinker With The Universe, He Recreates It Out Of His Own Experience And Understanding Of Life.

I See America Spreading Disaster. I See America As A Black Curse Upon The World. I See A Long Night Settling In And That Mushroom Which Has Poisoned The World Withering At The Roots.

It's The Pleasure Of Picking Up The Brush And Seeing What Happens.

It Is No Accident That Propels People Like Us To Paris.

I Had To Learn, As I Soon Did, That One Must Give Up Everything And Not Do Anything Else But Write, That One Must Writer And Write And Write, Even If Everybody In The World Advises You Against It, Even If Nobody Believes In You.

The Full And Joyful Acceptance Of The Worst In Oneself May Be The Only Sure Way Of Transforming It.

Tomorrow You May Bring About The Destruction Of Your World. Tomorrow You May Sing In Paradise Above The Smoking Ruins Of Your World-cities. But Tonight I Would Like To Think Of One Man, A Lone Individual, A Man Without Name Or Country, A Man Whom I Respect Because He Has Absolutely Nothing In Common With You - Myself. Tonight I Shall Meditate Upon That Which I Am.

Many Is The Mirage I Chased. Always I Was Overreaching Myself. The Oftener I Touched Reality, The Harder I Bounced Back To The World Of Illusion, Which Is The Name For Everyday Life.

Art Teaches Nothing, Except The Significance Of Life.

The Aim Of Life Is To Live, And To Live Means To Be Aware, Joyously, Drunkenly, Serenely, Divinely Aware.

There Was Another Thing I Heartily Disbelieved In - Work. Work, It Seemed To Me Even At The Threshold Of Life, Is An Activity Reserved For The Dullard. It Is The Very Opposite Of Creation, Which Is Play… The Part Of Me Which Was Given Up To Work, Which Enabled My Wife And Child To Live In The Manner Which They Unthinkingly Demanded, This Part Of Me Which Kept The Wheel Turning - A Completely Fatuous, Ego-centric Notion! - Was The Least Part Of Me. I Gave Nothing To The World In Fulfilling The Function Of Breadwinner; The World Exacted Its Tribute Of Me, That Was All.

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