Henry Miller - Tropic of Capricorn (1938)

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The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

Henry Miller

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.

Henry Miller

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.

Henry Miller

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.

Henry Miller

I wanted to die; I wanted to surrender because I saw no sense in struggling. I felt that nothing would be proved, substantiated, added or subtracted by continuing an existence which I had not asked for.

Henry Miller

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.

Henry Miller

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.

Henry Miller

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.

Henry Miller

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.

Henry Miller

The smile was so painfully swift and fleeting that it was like the flash of a knife.

Henry Miller

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.

Henry Miller

Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.

Henry Miller

For there is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self, and for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter.

Henry Miller

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.

Henry Miller

What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?

Henry Miller

To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no least single object anywhere that is not money, money, money everywhere and still not enough, and then no money or a little money or less money or more money, but money, always money, and if you have money or you don't have money it is the money that counts and money makes money, but what makes money make money?

Henry Miller

I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object.

Henry Miller

What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.

Henry Miller

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.

Henry Miller

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.

Henry Miller

Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.

Henry Miller

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.

Henry Miller

The most wonderful opportunity which life offers is to be human.

Henry Miller

Take a good look at me. Now tell me, do you think I'm the sort of fellow who gives a fuck what happens once he's dead?

Henry Miller