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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.

-Henry Miller

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We Have Been Educated

Henry Miller

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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.

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Whatever There Be Of Progress In Life Comes Not Through Adaptation But Through Daring.

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.

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

Your Whole Past Is Like A Long Sleep Which Would Have Been Forgotten Had There Been No Memory, But Remembrance Is There In The Blood And The Blood Is Like An Ocean In Which Everything Is Washed Away But That Which Is New And More Substantial Even Than Life - Reality.

But It's Just Because The Chances Are All Against You, Just Because There Is So Little Hope, That Life Is Sweet Over Here.

Writing, Like Life Itself, Is A Voyage Of Discovery.

To Paint Is To Love Again, And To Love Is To Live Life To The Fullest.

Who Hates The Jews More Than The Jew?

The Man Who Is Forever Disturbed About The Condition Of Humanity Either Has No Problems Of His Own Or Has Refused To Face Them.

Serenity Is When You Get Above All This, When It Doesn't Matter What They Think, Say Or Want, But When You Do As You Are, And See God And Devil As One.

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.

When Into The Womb Of Time Everything Is Again Withdrawn Chaos Will Be Restored And Chaos Is The Score Upon Which Reality Is Written.

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.

On The Meridian Of Time, There Is No Injustice: There Is Only The Poetry Of Motion Creating The Illusion Of Truth And Drama.

One Of The Reasons Why So Few Of Us Ever Act, Instead Of React, Is Because We Are Continually Stifling Our Deepest Impulses.

'life', Said Emerson, "consists In What A Man Is Thinking All Day." If That Be So, Then My Life Is Nothing But A Big Intestine.

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.

It Is The American Vice, The Democratic Disease Which Expresses Its Tyranny By Reducing Everything Unique To The Level Of The Herd.

In This Age, Which Believes That There Is A Short Cut To Everything, The Greatest Lesson To Be Learned Is That The Most Difficult Way Is, In The Long Run, The Easiest.

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

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

Life's Wildest Moment---she Kneels On The Sidewalk. Everything Else She Does Is Lies, Lies.

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.

I Saw Through To The Last Sign And Symbol, But I Could Not Read Her Face. I Could See Only The Eyes Shining Through, Huge, Fleshy-like Luminous Beasts, As Though I Were Swimming Behind Them In The Electric Effluvia Of Her Incandescent Vision.

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

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.

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

People Used To Envy Me My Inspiration. I Hate Inspiration. It Takes You Over Completely. I Could Never Wait Until It Passed And I Got Rid Of It.

When Spring Comes To Paris The Humblest Mortal Alive Must Feel That He Dwells In Paradise.

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.

Even If One’s Whole Life Were A Mistake, There Is Always Time To Change.

Leave Out The Parts That Readers Tend To Skip.

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.

Life, As It Is Called, Is For Most Of Us One Long Postponement.

Procrastination

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.

The Worst Sin That Can Be Committed Against The Artist Is To Take Him At His Word, To See In His Work A Fulfillment Instead Of An Horizon.

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.

Day By Day. No Yesterdays And No Tomorrows. The Barometer Never Changes, The Flag Is Always At Half-mast.

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

Jump Off. You Are A Protected Individual. Do Not Fear.

Over There You Think Of Nothing But Becoming President Of The United States Some Day. Potentially Every Man Is Presidential Timber. Here It's Different. Here Every Man Is Potentially A Zero. If You Become Something Or Somebody It Is An Accident, A Miracle.

When You Can't Create You Can Work

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.

When You Surrender, The Problem Ceases To Exist. Try To Solve It, Or Conquer It, And You Only Set Up More Resistance. . . . The Most Difficult Thing To Admit, And To Realize With One's Whole Being, Is That You Alone Control Nothing. . . .

If I Were Reading A Book And Happened To Strike A Wonderful Passage I Would Close The Book Then And There And Go For A Walk. I Hated The Thought Of Coming To The End Of A Good Book. I Would Tease It Along, Delay The Inevitable As Long As Possible, But Always, When I Hit A Great Passage, I Would Stop Reading Immediately. Out I Would Go, Rain, Hail, Snow Or Ice, And Chew The Cud.

Example Moves The World More Than Doctrine.

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.

The Imperfections Of A Man, His Frailties, His Faults, Are Just As Important As His Virtues.you Can't Separate Them. They're Wedded.

Everything Was For Tomorrow, But Tomorrow Never Came. The Present Was Only A Bridge And On This Bridge They Are Still Groaning, As The World Groans, And Not One Idiot Ever Thinks Of Blowing Up The Bridge.

Great God! What Have I Turned Into? What Right Have You People To Clutter Up My Life, Steal My Time, Probe My Soul, Suckle My Thoughts, Have Me For Your Companion, Confidant, And Information Bureau? What Do You Take Me For? Am I An Entertainer On Salary, Required Every Evening To Play An Intellectual Farce Under Your Stupid Noses? Am I A Slave, Bought And Paid For, To Crawl On My Belly In Front Of You Idlers And Lay At Your Feet All That I Do And All That I Know?

Through Endless Night The Earth Whirls Toward A Creation Unknown.

All My Good Reading, You Might Say, Was Done In The Toilet.

Everyday We Slaughter Our Finest Impulses. That Is Why We Get A Heartache When We Read The 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. Everyman, When He Gets Quiet, When He Becomes Desperately Honest With Himself, Is Capable Of Uttering Profound Truths.

The Real Leader Has No Need To Lead - He Is Content To Point The Way.

All My Good Reading, You Might Say, Was Done In The Toilet. There Are Passages In Ulysses Which Can Be Read Only In The Toilet - If One Wants To Extract The Full Flavor Of Their Content.

I See Myself Forever And Ever As The Ridiculous Man, The Lonely Soul, The Wanderer, The Restless Frustrated Artist, The Man In Love With Love, Always In Search Of The Absolute, Always Seeking The Unattainable

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.

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

If One Believes, Then Miracles Occur.

Keep Your Libraries, Your Penal Institutions, Your Insaneasylums... Give Me Beer.you Think Man Needs Rule, He Needs Beer. The World Does Not Need Morals, It Needs Beer... The Souls Of Men Have Been Fed With Indigestibles, But The Soul Could Make Use Of Beer.

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

But You Can’t Put Fight Into A Man’s Guts If He Hasn’t Any Fight In Him. There Are Some Of Us So Cowardly That You Can’t Ever Make Heroes Of Us, Not Even If You Frighten Us To Death. We Know Too Much, Maybe. There Are Some Of Us Who Don’t Live In The Moment, Who Live A Little Ahead, Or A Little Behind.

It Does Me Good To Write A Letter Which Is Not A Response To A Demand, A Gratuitous Letter, So To Speak, Which Has Accumulated In Me Like The Waters Of A Reservoir.

Those Who Are Truly Decrepit, Living Corpses, So To Speak, Are The Middle-aged, Middle-class Men And Woman Who Are Stuck In Their Comfortable Grooves And Imagine That The Status Quo Will Least Forever Or Else Are So Frightened It Won't, That They Have Retreated Into Their Mental Bomb Shelters To Wait It Out.

Men Are Not Suffering From The Lack Of Good Literature, Good Art, Good Theatre, Good Music, But From That Which Has Made It Impossible For These To Become Manifest. In Short, They Are Suffering From The Silent Shameful Conspiracy (the More Shameful Since It Is Unacknowledged) Which Has Bound Them Together As Enemies Of Art And Artists.

There Is Something Else To Be Said About This Immediate, Spontaneous Way Of Working, And That Is This: In Such Moments, One Is Playing At The Game Of Creation.

We Live At The Edge Of The Miraculous.

The Legal System Is Often A Mystery, And We, Its Priests, Preside Over Rituals Baffling To Everyday Citizens.

A Book Lying Idle On A Shelf Is Wasted Ammunition. Like Money, Books Must Be Kept In Constant Circulation. Lend And Borrow To The Maximum.

As Long As That Spark Of Passion Is Missing There Is No Human Significance In The Performance.

Words, Sentences, Ideas, No Matter How Subtle Or Ingenious, The Maddest Flights Of Poetry, The Most Profound Dreams, The Most Hallucinating Visions, Are But Crude Hieroglyphs Chiseled In Pain And Sorrow To Commemorate An Event Which Is Untransmissible.

I Have Made A Silent Compact With Myself Not To Change A Line Of What I Write. I Am Not Interested In Perfecting My Thoughts, Nor My Actions.

The Word Which Gives The Key To The National Vice Is Waste. And People Who Are Wasteful Are Not Wise, Neither Can They Remain Young And Vigorous. In Order To Transmute Energy To Higher And More Subtle Levels One Must First Conserve It.

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

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.

There Are No "facts"- There Is Only The Fact That Man, Every Man Everywhere In The World, Is On His Way To Ordination. Some Men Take The Long Route And Some Take The Short Route. Every Man Is Working Out His Own Way And Nobody Can Be Of Help Except By Being Kind, Generous, And Patient.

...when You Are Convinced That All The Exits Are Blocked, Either You Take To Believing In Miracles Or You Stand Still Like The Hummingbird. The Miracle Is That The Honey Is Always There, Right Under Your Nose, Only You Were Too Busy Searching Elsewhere To Realize It. The Worst Is Not Death But Being Blind, Blind To The Fact That Everything About Life Is In The Nature Of The Miraculous.

Instead Of Asking 'how Much Damage Will The Work In Question Bring About?' Why Not Ask 'how Much Good? How Much Joy?'

The More I Wrote, The More I Became A Human Being. The Writing May Have Seemed Monstrous (to Some) For It Was A Violation, But I Became A More Human Individual Because Of It. I Was Getting The Poison Out Of My System.

Art Teaches Nothing, Except The Significance Of Life.

Things Happen Or They Don't Happen, That's All. Nothing Is Accomplished By Sweat And Struggle. Nearly Everything Which We Call Life Is Just Insomnia, An Agony Because We've Lost The Habit Of Falling Asleep. We Don't Know How To Let Go. We're Like A Jack-in-the-box Perched On Top Of A Spring And The More We Struggle The Harder It Is To Get Back In The Box.

Every Day The Choice Is Presented To Us, To Live Up To The Spirit That Is In Us, Or Deny It.

Out Yonder They May Curse, Revile, And Torture One Another, Defile All The Human Instincts, Make A Shambles Of Creation (if It Were In Their Power), But Here, No, Here, It Is Unthinkable, Here There Is Abiding Peace, The Peace Of God, And The Serene Security Created By A Handful Of Good Neighbors Living At One With The Creature World.

The Frenchman Is First And Foremost A Man. He Is Likeable Often Just Because Of His Weaknesses, Which Are Always Thoroughly Human, Even If Despicable.

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

Begin This Moment, Wherever You Find Yourself, And Take No Thought Of The Morrow. Look Not To Russia, China, India, Not To Washington, Not To The Adjoining County, City Or State, But To Your Immediate Surroundings. Forget Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed And All The Others. Do Your Part To The Best Of Your Ability, Regardless Of The Consequences. Above All, Do Not Wait For The Next Man To Follow Suit.

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.

All My Calvaries Were Rosy Crucifixions, Pseudo-tragedies To Keep The Fires Of Hell Burning Brightly For The Real Sinners Who Are In Danger Of Being Forgotten.

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.

Even The Idiot May Have A Message For Us

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

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

Confusion Is A Word We Have Invented For An Order Which Is Not Understood.

We Create Our Fate Every Day . . . Most Of The Ills We Suffer From Are Directly Traceable To Our Own Behavior.

It Was Here In Big Sur That I First Learned To Say 'amen.'

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

Creation Of Man

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.

Without A Coca-cola Life Is Unthinkable.

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

I'm Delirious Because I'm Dying So Fast.

The Best Technique Is None At All.

Imagination Is The Voice Of The Daring.

There's Something Perverse About Women...they're All Masochists At Heart.

Tropic Of Cancer

It Is Silly To Go On Pretending That Under The Skin We Are Brothers. The Truth Is More Likely That Under The Skin We Are All Cannibals, Assassins, Traitors, Liars And Hypocrites.

Until We Accept The Fact That Life Itself Is Founded In Mystery, We Shall Learn Nothing.

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.

France May One Day Exist No More, But The Dordogne Will Live On Just As Dreams Live On And Nourish The Souls Of Men.

A Book Lying Idle On A Shelf Is Wasted Ammunition.

We Are Dancing In The Hollow Of Nothingness. We Are One Flesh, But Separated Like Stars.

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 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.

Any Genuine Philosophy Leads To Action And From Action Back Again To Wonder, To The Enduring Fact Of Mystery.

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.

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.

As Far As History Goes I Am Dead. If There Is Something Beyond I Shall Have To Bounce Back. I Have Found God, But He Is Insufficient. I Am Only Spiritually Dead. Physically I Am Alive. Morally I Am Free. The World Which I Have Departed Is A Menagerie.

The Ordinary Man Is Involved In Action, The Hero Acts. An Immense Difference.

I Haven't Any Allegiance, Any Responsibilities, Any Hatreds, Any Worries, Any Prejudices, Any Passion. I'm Neither For Nor Against. I'm A Neutral.

I Didn't Dare To Think Of Anything Then Except The "facts." To Get Beneath The Facts I Would Have Had To Be An Artist, And One Doesn't Become An Artist Overnight. First You Have To Be Crushed, To Have Your Conflicting Points Of View Annihilated. You Have To Be Wiped Out As A Human Being In Order To Be Born Again An Individual. You Have To Be Carbonized And Mineralized In Order To Work Upwards From The Last Common Denominator Of The Self. You Have To Get Beyond Pity In Order To Feel From The Very Roots Of Your Being.

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.

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

There's Nothing Wrong With The World. What's Wrong Is Our Way Of Looking At It.

Understanding Is Not A Piercing Of The Mystery, But An Acceptance Of It, A Living Blissfully With It, In It, Through And By It.

We Create Our Fate Everyday

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

The One Thing We Can Never Get Enough Of Is Love. And The One Thing We Never Give Enough Is Love.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

The Concert Is A Polite Form Of Self Induced Torture.

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 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.

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.

Whatever Needs To Be Maintained Through Force Is Doomed.

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.

Let Me Be, Was All I Wanted. Be What I Am, No Matter How I Am.

To Sing You Must First Open Your Mouth. You Must Have A Pair Of Lungs, And A Little Knowledge Of Music. It Is Not Necessary To Have An Accordion, Or A Guitar. The Essential Thing Is To Want To Sing. This Then Is A Song. I Am Singing.

The Smile Was So Painfully Swift And Fleeting That It Was Like The Flash Of A Knife.

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

Honest Criticism Means Nothing: What One Wants Is Unrestrained Passion, Fire For Fire.

We Don't Trust Our Five Senses; We Rely On Our Critics And Educators, All Of Whom Are Failures In The Realm Of Creation.

Once You Have Given Up The Ghost, Everything Follows With Dead Certainty, Even In The Midst Of Chaos.

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

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

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

Madness Is Tonic And Invigorating. It Makes The Sane More Sane. The Only Ones Who Are Unable To Profit By It Are The Insane.

A Book Lying Idle On A Shelf Is Wasted Ammunition. Like Money, Books Must Be Kept In Constant Circulation... A Book Is Not Only A Friend, It Makes Friends For You. When You Have Possessed A Book With Mind And Spirit, You Are Enriched. But When You Pass It On You Are Enriched Threefold.

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.

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.

It Is With The Soul That We Grasp The Essence Of Another Human Being, Not With The Mind, Nor Even With The Heart.

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.

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.

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. Lose Yourself In It, And You Are Free.

Whatever I Do Is Done Out Of Sheer Joy; I Drop My Fruits Like A Ripe Tree. What The General Reader Or The Critic Makes Of Them Is Not My Concern.

When You Travel Often, You Will Be Addicted To It Forever.

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.

I Have Always Looked Upon Decay As Being Just As Wonderful And Rich An Expression Of Life As Growth.

You Make Me Tremendously Happy To Hold Me Undivided - To Let Me Be The Artist, As It Were, And Yet Not Forgo The Man, The Animal, The Hungry, Insatiable Lover. No Woman Has Ever Granted Me All The Privileges I Need - And You, Why You Sing Out So Blithely, So Boldly, With A Laugh Even - Yes, You Invite Me To Go Ahead, Be Myself, Benture Anything. I Adore You For That. That Is Where You Are Truly Regal, A Woman Extraordinary. What A Woman You Are! I Laugh To Myself Now When I Think Of You. I Have No Fear Of Your Femaleness.

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.

There Are Only Three Things To Be Done With A Woman. You Can Love Her, Suffer For Her, Or Turn Her Into Literature.

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

One Can Be Absolutely Truthful And Sincere Even Though Admittedly The Most Outrageous Liar. Fiction And Invention Are Of The Very Fabric Of Life.

Paint What You Like And Die Happy

My One Thought Is To Get Out Of New York, To Experience Something Genuinely American.

By Choosing To Live Above The Ordinary Level We Create Extraordinary Problems For Ourselves.

I Like The One About The Little Soulworms That Fly Out Of The Nest For The Resurrection.

To Be Joyous Is To Be A Madman In A World Of Sad Ghosts.

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

Don't Look For Miracles. You Yourself Are The Miracle.

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.

We Do Not Talk - We Bludgeon One Another With Facts And Theories Gleaned From Cursory Readings Of Newspapers, Magazines And Digests.

When I Reflect That The Task Which The Artist Implicitly Sets Himself Is To Overthrow Existing Values, To Make Of The Chaos About Him An Order Which Is His Own, To Sow Strife And Ferment So That By The Emotional Release Those Who Are Dead May Be Restored To Life, Then It Is That I Run With Joy To The Great And Imperfect Ones, Their Confusion Nourishes Me, Their Stuttering Is Like Divine Music To My Ears.

Who But The Artist Has The Power To Open Man Up, To Set Free The Imagination? The Others - Priest, Teacher, Saint, Statesman, Warrior - Hold Us To The Path Of History. They Keep Us Chained To The Rock, That The Vultures May Eat Out Our Hearts. It Is The Artist Who Has The Courage To Go Against The Crowd; He Is The Unrecognized "hero Of Our Time" - And Of All Time.

We Are All Guilty Of Crime The Great Crime Of Not Living Life To The Full. But We Are All Potentially Free. We Can Stop Thinking Of What We Have Failed To Do And Do Whatever Lies Within Our Power. What Those Powers That Are In Us May Be No One Has Truly Dared To Imagine. That They Are Infinite We Will Realize The Day We Admit To Ourselves That Imagination Is Everything. Imagination Is The Voice Of Daring.

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.

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

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

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.

Next To Love Friendship, In My Opinion, Is The Most Valuable Thing Life Has To Offer.

Friendship Love

Those Interested In Celestial Navigation Are Advised To First Obtain A Rudimentary Knowledge Of Integral Calculus, Phlebotomy, Astral Physics And Related Subjects. The Use Of Liquor Is Strictly Forbidden On Interplanetary Flights.

The Most Difficult Thing To Adjust To, Apparently, Is Peace And Contentment.

Contentment And Peace

We Are Swimming On The Face Of Time And All Else Has Drowned, Is Drowning, Or Will Drown.

A Book Is A Part Of Life, A Manifestation Of Life, Just As Much As A Tree Or A Horse Or A Star. It Obeys Its Own Rhythms, Its Own Laws, Whether It Be A Novel, A Play, Or A Diary. The Deep, Hidden Rhythm Of Life Is Always There - That Of The Pulse, The Heart Beat.

Art Is Only A Means To Life, To The Life More Abundant. It Is Not In Itself The Life More Abundant. It Merely Points The Way, Something Which Is Overlooked Not Only By The Public, But Very Often By The Artist Himself. In Becoming An End It Defeats Itself.

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

Giving And Receiving Are At Bottom One Thing, Dependent On Whether One Lives Open Or Closed. Living Openly One Becomes A Medium, A Transmitter; Living Thus, As A River, One Experiences Life To The Full, Flows Along With The Current Of Life, And Dies In Order To Live Again As An Ocean.

We Must Get Going. Tomorrow, Tomorrow.

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

When You Know What Men Are Capable Of You Marvel Neither At Their Sublimity Nor Their Baseness. There Are No Limits In Either Direction Apparently.

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.

I Want To Undress You, Vulgarize You A Bit.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Develop An Interest In Life As You See It.

Interest In Life

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