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1d7570e
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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. For some reason or other man looks for the miracle, and to accomplish it he will wade through blood. He will debauch himself with ideas, he will reduce himself to a shadow if for only one second of his life he can close his eyes to the hideousness of reality. Everything is endured- disgrace, humiliation, ..
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Henry Miller |
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55ff05d
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Well, I'll take these pages and move on. Things are happening elsewhere. Things are always happening. It seems wherever I go there is drama. People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes, but you can't get permanently deloused. Everywhere I go people are making a mess of their lives. Everyone has his private tragedy. It's in the blood now - misfortune, ennui, grief, ..
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Henry Miller |
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1216327
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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d33ab1f
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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..
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inspirational
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Henry Miller |
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468ee08
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Once I thought that to be human was the highest aim a man could have, but I see now that it was meant to destroy me. To-day I am proud to say that I am inhuman, that I belong not to men and governments, that I have nothing to do with creeds and principles. I have nothing to do with the creaking machinery of humanity - I belong to the earth!
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Henry Miller |
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3ccfc09
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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."
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artists
freedom
imagination
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Henry Miller |
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b3c3c14
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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757b4b5
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I will go directly to her home, ring the bell, and walk in. Here I am, take me-or stab me to death. Stab the heart, stab the brains, stab the lungs, the kidneys, the viscera, the eyes, the ears. If only one organ be left alive you are doomed-doomed to be mine, forever, in this world and the next and all the worlds to come. I'm a desperado of love, a scalper, a slayer. I'm insatiable. I eat hair, dirty wax, dry blood clots, anything and ever..
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Henry Miller |
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8ea989c
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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.
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life
spain
paradise
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Henry Miller |
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ea04f70
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I am a free man--and I need my freedom. 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. What do you want of me? When I have something to say, I put it in print. When I have something to give, I give it. Your prying curiosity turns my stomach! Your..
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Henry Miller |
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86dd2b7
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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.
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life
philosophy
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Henry Miller |
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ad9c3ea
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Don't expect me to be sane anymore. Don't let's be sensible. It was a marriage at Louveciennes--you can't dispute it. I came away with pieces of you sticking to me; I am walking about, swimming, in an ocean of blood, your Andalusian blood, distilled and poisonous... I can't see how I can go on living away from you--these intermissions are death. How did it seem to you when Hugo came back? Was I still there? I can't picture you moving about ..
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passion
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Henry Miller |
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ed7f875
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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281f63d
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Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos.
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Henry Miller |
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09048e6
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For there is only one great adventure and that is inward toward the self, and for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter.
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Henry Miller |
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ab70c5a
|
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.
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Henry Miller |
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0a64081
|
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 incompreh..
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silence
stars
light
nature
eloquent
fecundity
incomprehensible
womb
veins
stone
blood
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Henry Miller |
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2ad1e09
|
We clutter the earth with our inventions, never dreaming that possibly they are unnecessary -- or disadvantageous. We devise astounding means of communication, but do we communicate with one another? We move our bodies to and fro and incredible speeds, but do we really leave the spot we started from? Mentally, morally, spiritually, we are fettered. What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers,..
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Henry Miller |
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8889c66
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That we cannot rise equal to situations when we are in them -- that is the tragedy of life.
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tragedy
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Henry Miller |
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16e0a43
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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0a587d7
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You can forgive a young cunt anything. A young cunt doesn't have to have brains. They're better without brains. But an old cunt, even if she's brilliant, even if she's the most charming woman in the world, nothing makes any difference. A young cunt is an investment; an old cunt is a dead loss. All they can do for you is buy you things. But that doesn't put meat on their arms or juice between their legs.
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women
cunts
females
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Henry Miller |
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9dca82b
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Her fluency was marvelous. She would say things at random, intricate, flamelike, or slide off into a parenthetical limbo peppered with fireworks-- admirable linguistic feats which a practiced writer might struggle for hours to achieve.
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Henry Miller |
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7483803
|
There's something perverse about women...they're all masochists at heart.
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Henry Miller |
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98e8e3a
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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.
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relfection
sentient-being
sentient-beings
tropic-of-cancer
henry-miller
forgotten
water
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Henry Miller |
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ad1d043
|
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
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religion
science
nationalism
morals
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Henry Miller |
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945a7bc
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either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird.
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Henry Miller |
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64d8096
|
Side by side with the human race there runs another race of beings, the inhuman ones, the race of artists who, goaded by unknown impulses, take the lifeless mass of humanity and by the fever and ferment with which they imbue it turn this soggy dough into bread and the bread into wine and the wine into song.
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Henry Miller |
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2b0d1ba
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The cancer of time is eating us away
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Henry Miller |
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c6f42cd
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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 dawn is breaking on a new world, a jungle world in which lean spirits roam with sharp claws. If a am a hyena I am a lean and hungry one: I go forth to fatten myself.
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Henry Miller |
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956c0db
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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1a72bde
|
lktb@ bkhT lyd `l~ ljdr lyst GmD@ wl mhdd@ lmn ystTy` 'n ytrjmh. ljdrn tnhr, wtnhr m`h mkhwfn wtrddn. lkn akhr jdr ynhr hw dhk ldh~ yTwWq ldht dkhlh. wmn l yqr' b`yn~W ldht l yqr' 'bd. l`yn ldkhly@ tkhtrq ljdrn klh, wtfk Tlsm lkhTwT klh. ttrjm "lrsy'l" klh. nh lyst `ynan qry'@ 'w mkhmn@, bl `yn wshy@; l ttlq~ lnwr mn lkhrj, bl tuSdr nwran. nwran wfrHan. w`br lnwr wlfrH ynftH l`lm, ynkshf lybdw km hw: jml yfwq lwSf, wkhlq l ynth~."
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Henry Miller |
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0827c14
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Every time you come to the limit of what is demanded of you, you are faced with the same problem-to be yourself!
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Henry Miller |
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d152e8a
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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. I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse . . . To sing you must first open y..
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Henry Miller |
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30a97c8
|
How we hate to admit that we would like nothing better than to be the slave! Slave and master at the same time! For even in love the slave is always the master in disguise. The man who must conquer the woman, subjugate her, bend her to his will, form her according to his desires--is he not the slave of his slave? How easy it is, in this relationship, for the woman to upset the balance of power! The mere threat of self-dependence, on the wom..
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master-and-slave
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Henry Miller |
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7b7175d
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The smile was so painfully swift and fleeting that it was like the flash of a knife.
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Henry Miller |
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7d6282f
|
To love! To surrender absolutely, to prostrate oneself before the divine image, to die a thousand imaginary deaths, to annihilate every trace of self, to find the whole universe embodied and enshrined in the living image of another! Adolescent, we say. Rot! This is the germ of the future life, the seed which we hide away, which we bury deep within us, which we smother and stifle and do our utmost to destroy as we advance from one experience..
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Henry Miller |
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13a0f64
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I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object.
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philosophy
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Henry Miller |
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0ae744c
|
But it's just because the chances are all against you, just because there is so little hope, that life is sweet over here.
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Henry Miller |
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bd6edc2
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Day by day. No yesterdays and no tomorrows. The barometer never changes, the flag is always at half-mast.
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Henry Miller |
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7b95058
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All I ask of life, he says, is a bunch of books, a bunch of dreams, and a bunch of cunt.
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Henry Miller |
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00f95be
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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3c926c3
|
Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos. From the beginning it was never anything but chaos: it was a fluid which enveloped me, which I breathed in through the gills. In the substrata, where the moon shone steady and opaque, it was smooth and fecundating; above it was a jangle and a discord. In everything I quickly saw the opposite, the contradiction, and between the real and the ..
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Henry Miller |
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d86150f
|
My hunger and curiosity drive me forward in all directions at once.
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Henry Miller |
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8a2dca4
|
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."
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Henry Miller |