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When I Realize That She Is Gone, Perhaps Gone Forever, A Great Void Opens Up And I Feel That I Am Falling, Falling, Falling Into Deep, Black Space. And This Is Worse Than Tears, Deeper Than Regret Or Pain Or Sorrow, It Is The Abyss Into Which Satan Was Plunged. There Is No Climbing Back, No Ray Of Light, No Sound Of Human Voice Or Human Touch Of Hand.

-Henry Miller

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When I Realize That

Henry Miller

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When I Realize That She Is Gone, Perhaps Gone Forever, A Great Void Opens Up And I Feel That I Am Falling, Falling, Falling Into Deep, Black Space. And This Is Worse Than Tears, Deeper Than Regret Or Pain Or Sorrow, It Is The Abyss Into Which Satan Was Plunged. There Is No Climbing Back, No Ray Of Light, No Sound Of Human Voice Or Human Touch Of Hand.

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It Was Only In My Forties That I Started Feeling Young.

The Waking Mind, You See, Is The Least Serviceable In The Arts.

I Don't Think We Should Read For Instruction But To Give Our Souls A Chance To Luxuriate.

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.

After All, Most Writing Is Done Away From The Typewriter, Away From The Desk. I'd Say It Occurs In The Quiet, Silent Moments, While You're Walking Or Shaving Or Playing A Game, Or Whatever, Or Even Talking To Someone You're Not Vitally Interested In.

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

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

Whoever Uses The Spirit That Is In Him Creatively Is An Artist. To Make Living Itself An Art, That Is The Goal.

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?

Every Man, When He Gets Quiet, When He Becomes Desperately Honest With Himself, Is Capable Of Uttering Profound Truths. We All Derive From The Same Source. There Is No Mystery About The Origin Of Things. 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.

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

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

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.

Even The Idiot May Have A Message For Us

Writing, Like Life Itself, Is A Voyage Of Discovery. The Adventure Is A Metaphysical One: It Is A Way Of Approaching Life Indirectly, Of Acquiring A Total Rather Than A Partial View Of The Universe. The Writer Lives Between The Upper And Lower Worlds: He Takes The Path In Order Eventually To Become The Path Himself.

The History Of The World Is The History Of The Privileged Few.

I Am Thinking Of One Woman And The Rest Is Blotto. I Say I Am Thinking Of Her, But The Truth Is I Am Dying A Stellar Death. I Am Lying There Like A Sick Star Waiting For The Light To Go Out. Years Ago I Lay On This Same Bed And I Waited And Waited To Be Born. Nothing Happened. Except That My Mother, In Her Lutheran Rage, Threw A Bucket Of Water Over Me. My Mother, Poor Imbecile That She Was, Thought I Was Lazy. She Didn't Know That I Had Gotten Caught In The Stellar Drift, That I Was Being Pulverized To A Black Extinction Out There In The Farthest Rim Of The Universe.

I Don't Know Whether You've Ever Had A Woman Eat An Apple While You Were Doing It. Well, You Can Imagine How That Affects You.

What Does It Matter How One Comes By The Truth So Long As One Pounces Upon It And Lives By It?

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.

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.

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

Every Day That We Fail To Live Out The Maximum Of Our Potentialities We Kill The Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Christ Which Is In Us.

One's Destination Is Never A Place But Rather A New Way Of Looking At Things.

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

I Will Never Again Go To People Under False Pretenses Even If It Is To Give Them The Holy Bible. I Will Never Again Sell Anything, Even If I Have To Starve. I Am Going Home Now And I Will Sit Down And Really Write About People.

No One Asks You To Throw Mozart Out Of The Window. Keep Mozart. Cherish Him. Keep Moses Too, And Buddha And Lao Tzu And Christ. Keep Them In Your Heart. But Make Room For The Others, The Coming Ones, The Ones Who Are Already Scratching On The Window-panes.

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

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

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!

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

Friendship Love

I Am Of The Order Whose Purpose Is Not To Teach The World A Lesson But To Explain That School Is Over.

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.

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.

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.

Human Beings Make A Strange Fauna And Flora. From A Distance They Appear Negligible; Close Up They Are Apt To Appear Ugly And Malicious. More Than Anything They Need To Be Surrounded With Sufficient Space―space Even More Than Time.

Writing Is Its Own Reward.

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

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.

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.

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

Words Are Loneliness.

True Strength Lies In Submission Which Permits One To Dedicate His Life, Through Devotion, To Something Beyond Himself.

There Is No Salvation In Becoming Adapted To A World Which Is Crazy.

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

In The Attempt To Defeat Death Man Has Been Inevitably Obliged To Defeat Life, For The Two Are Inextricably Related. Life Moves On To Death, And To Deny One Is To Deny The Other.

The World Is The Mirror Of Myself Dying.

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.

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

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.

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.

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. . . .

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.

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.

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

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

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

Procrastination

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.

What I Want Is To Open Up. I Want To Know What's Inside Me. I Want Everybody To Open Up. I'm Like An Imbecile With A Can Opener In His Hand, Wondering Where To Begin-- To Open Up The Earth. I Know That Underneath The Mess Everything Is Marvelous. I'm Sure Of It.

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.

Somewhere Along The Way One Discovers That What One Has To Tell Is Not Nearly So Important As The Telling Itself.

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.

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 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.

The Art Of Living Is Based On Rhythm - On Give & Take, Ebb & Flow, Light & Dark, Life & Death. By Acceptance Of All Aspects Of Life, Good & Bad, Right & Wrong, Yours & Mine, The Static, Defensive Life, Which Is What Most People Are Cursed With, Is Converted Into A Dance, 'the Dance Of Life,' Metamorphosis.

Even If It Doesn't Work, There Is Something Healthy And Invigorating About Direct Action

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

In Every Man's Heart There Is Anchored A Little Schooner.

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.

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.

The Concert Is A Polite Form Of Self Induced Torture.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

Music Is The Can-opener Of The Soul.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Art Teaches Nothing, Except The Significance Of Life.

When I Realize That She Is Gone, Perhaps Gone Forever, A Great Void Opens Up And I Feel That I Am Falling, Falling, Falling Into Deep, Black Space. And This Is Worse Than Tears, Deeper Than Regret Or Pain Or Sorrow, It Is The Abyss Into Which Satan Was Plunged. There Is No Climbing Back, No Ray Of Light, No Sound Of Human Voice Or Human Touch Of Hand.

I Thought, When I Came Upon Her, That I Was Seizing Hold Of Life... Instead I Lost Hold Of Life Completely. I Reached Out For Something To Attach Myself To - And I Found Nothing. But In Reaching Out, In The Effort To Grasp, To Attach Myself, Left High And Dry As I Was, I Nevertheless Found Something I Had Not Looked For - Myself.

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.

The Purpose Of Life Is To Remember.

Everything Remains Unsettled Forever, Depend On It

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

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

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

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

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.

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

The Light Of Greece Opened My Eyes, Penetrated My Pores, Expanded My Whole Being.

Dedication Is Not What Others Expect Of You, It Is What You Can Give To Others.

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

If There Is To Be Any Peace It Will Come Through Being, Not Having.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Keep Your Exclamation Points Under Control!

Exclamation Points

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.

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.

We Live At The Edge Of The Miraculous.

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.

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.

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

Creation Of Man

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.

One Thing Is Certain, That When You Die And Are Resurrected You Belong To The Earth And Whatever Is Of The Earth Is Yours Inalienably. You Become An Anomaly Of Nature, A Being Without Shadow; You Will Never Die Again But Only Pass Away Like The Phenomena About You.

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

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.

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.

I Am Living At The Villa Borghese. There Is Not A Crumb Of Dirt Anywhere, Nor A Chair Misplaced. We Are All Alone Here And We Are Dead.

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)

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Who Hates The Jews More Than The Jew?

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

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.

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

The Best Technique Is None At All.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Fame Is An Illusive Thing - Here Today, Gone Tomorrow. The Fickle, Shallow Mob Raises Its Heroes To The Pinnacle Of Approval Today And Hurls Them Into Oblivion Tomorrow At The Slightest Whim; Cheers Today, Hisses Tomorrow; Utter Forgetfulness In A Few Months.

When You Meet The Man [brassai] You See At Once That He Is Equipped With No Ordinary Eyes. And The Sharpness Of Vision And Depth Of Insight Are Revealed In Brassai's Lifelong Photographic Exploration Of Paris - Its People, Places, And Things.

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

You Can Travel Fifty Thousand Miles In America Without Once Tasting A Piece Of Good Bread.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

What Seems Nasty, Painful, Evil Can Become A Source Of Beauty, Joy, And Strength, If Faced With An Open Mind.

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

Develop An Interest In Life As You See It.

Interest In Life

I Want To Undress You, Vulgarize You A Bit.

Life Moves On, Whether We Act As Cowards Or Heroes.

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.

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

The Cradles Of Civilization Are The Putrid Sinks Of The World.

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.

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

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

No Man Would Set A Word Down On Paper If He Had The Courage To Live Out What He Believed In.

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

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

A New World Is Not Made Simply By Trying To Forget The Old. A New World Is Made With A New Spirit, With New Values. Our World May Have Begun That Way, But Today It Is Caricature. Our World Is A World Of Things. What We Dread Most, In The Face Of The Impending Debacle, Is That We Shall Be Obliged To Give Up Our Gewgaws, Our Gadgets, All The Little Comforts That Have Made Us So Uncomfortable. We Are Not Peaceful Souls; We Are Smug, Timid, Queasy And Quaky.

The Wallpaper With Which The Men Of Science Have Covered The World Of Reality Is Falling To Tatters. The Grand Whorehouse Which They Have Made Of Life Requires No Decoration; It Is Essential That Only The Drains Function Adequately. Beauty, That Feline Beauty That Has Us By The Balls In America, Is Finished.

It's Good To Be Just Plain Happy, It's A Little Better To Know That You're Happy; But To Understand That You're Happy And To Know Why And How And Still Be Happy, Be Happy In The Being And The Knowing, Well That Is Beyond Happiness, That Is Bliss.

Who Wants To Be A Hundred? What's The Point Of It? A Short Life And A Merry One Is Far Better Than A Long One Sustained By Fear, Caution, And Perpetual Medical Surveillance.

America Is No Place For An Artist: To Be An Artist Is To Be A Moral Leper, An Economic Misfit, A Social Liability. A Corn-fed Hog Enjoys A Better Life Than A Creative Writer, Painter Or Musician. To Be A Rabbit Is Better Still.

If One Believes, Then Miracles Occur.

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.

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

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.

I'm A Bit Retarded, Like Most Americans.

A Year Ago, Six Months Ago, I Thought That I Was An Artist. I No Longer Think About It, I Am. Everything That Was Literature Has Fallen From Me. There Are No More Books To Be Written, Thank God. This Then? This Is Not A Book. This Is Libel, Slander, Defamation Of Character. 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.

Chaos Is The Score Upon Which Reality Is Written.

Order And Chaos

He Saw That Science Had Become As Great A Hoax As Religion, That Nationalism Was A Farce, Patriotism A Fraud, Education A Form Of Leprosy, And That Morals Were For Cannibals

Often, When Following The Trail Which Meanders Over The Hills, I Pull Myself Up In An Effort To Encompass The Glory And The Grandeur Which Envelops The Whole Horizon. Often, When The Clouds Pile Up In The North And The Sea Is Churned With White Caps, I Say To Myself: "this Is The California That Men Dreamed Of Years Ago, This Is The Pacific That Balboa Looked Out On From The Peak Of Darien, This Is The Face Of The Earth As The Creator Intended It To Look.

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.

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.

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

All Growth Is A Leap In The Dark.

The Moment One Gives Close Attention To Any Thing, Even A Blade Of Grass It Becomes A Mysterious, Awesome, Indescribably Magnificent World In Itself.

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

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.

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