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feba208
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As long as that spark of passion is missing there is no human significance in the performance.
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Henry Miller |
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c3f0389
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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9c0268a
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There is a theory that when a planet, like our earth for example, has manifested every form of life, when it has fulfilled itself to the point of exhaustion, it crumbles to bits and is dispersed like star dust throughout the universe. It does not roll on like a dead moon, but explodes, and in the space of a few minutes, there is not a trace of it visible in the heavens. In marine life we have a similar effect. it is called implosion. When a..
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Henry Miller |
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4831ca4
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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f490fcb
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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.
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nature
good-neighbors
serenity
environment
california
ecology
peace
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Henry Miller |
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c32777b
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The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware. In this state of god-like awareness one sings; in this realm the world exists as poem.
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Henry Miller |
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22c1370
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New York! The white prisons, the sidewalks swarming with maggots, the breadlines, the opium joints that are built like palaces, the kikes that are there, the lepers, the thugs, and above all, the ennui, the monotony of faces, streets, legs, houses, skyscrapers, meals, posters, jobs, crimes, loves... A whole city erected over a hollow pit of nothingness. Meaningless. Absolute meaningless.
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Henry Miller |
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b122b32
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Like every man I am my own worst enemy, but unlike most men I know too that I am my own saviour.
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Henry Miller |
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8b03c31
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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c409a95
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The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous. The language of society is conformity; the language of the creative individual is freedom. Life will continue to be a hell as long as people who make up the world shut their eyes to reality.
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Henry Miller |
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e44fcd7
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In the days to come, when it will seem as if I were entombed, when the very firmament threatens to come crashing down upon my head, I shall be forced to abandon everything except what these spirits implanted in me. I shall be crushed, debased, humiliated. I shall be frustrated in every fiber of my being. I shall even take to howling like a dog. But I shall not be utterly lost! Eventually a day is to dawn when, glancing over my own life as t..
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Henry Miller |
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00f3f26
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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4f467d9
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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)
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Henry Miller |
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b2fcfda
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Only a rich cunt can save me now,' he says with an air of utmost weariness. 'One gets tired of chasing after new cunts all the time. It gets mechanical. The trouble is, you see, I can't fall in love. I'm too much of an egoist. Women only help me to dream, that's all. It's a vice, like drink or opium. I've got to have a new one every day; if I don't I get morbid. I think too much. Sometimes I'm amazed at myself, how quick I pull it off -- an..
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Henry Miller |
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a4c2e2e
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lTryq@ lty yqr' bh lmr ktb, hy lTryq@ lty yqr' bh lHy@.
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Henry Miller |
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53056db
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There is one thing I like about the Poles--their language. Polish, when it is spoken by intelligent people, puts me in ecstasy. The sound of the language evokes strange images in which there is always a greensward of fine spiked grass in which hornets and snakes play a great part. I remember days long back when Stanley would invite me to visit his relatives; he used to make me carry a roll of music because he wanted to show me off to these ..
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poles
polish-language
poland
polish
language
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Henry Miller |
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8fdf8df
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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 go..
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Henry Miller |
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b928374
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If I am against the condition of the world it is not because I am a moralist, it is because I want to laugh more. I don't say that God is one grand laugh: I say that you've got to laugh hard before you can get anywhere near God. My whole aim in life is to get near to God, that is, to get nearer to myself. That's why it doesn't matter to me what road I take. But music is very important. Music is a tonic for the pineal gland. Music isn't Bach..
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Henry Miller |
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c3062c3
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Show me a man who over-elaborates and I will show you a great man! What is called their 'overelaboration' is my meat: it is the sign of struggle, it is struggle itself with all the fibers clinging to it, the very aura and ambiance of the discordant spirit. And when you show me a man who expresses himself perfectly I will not say that he is not great, but I will say that I am unattracted . . . I miss the cloying qualities. When I reflect tha..
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Henry Miller |
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01372b3
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Were there a Christian so faithful to his God as I was to her we would all be Jesus Christ today.
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Henry Miller |
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98f874d
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the world is the mirror of myself dying.
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Henry Miller |
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59195ed
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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 ..
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Henry Miller |
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97eae95
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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 ..
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Henry Miller |
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bf8669c
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A world without hope, but no despair
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Henry Miller |
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efdc119
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If at eighty you're not a cripple or an invalid, if you have your health, if you still enjoy a good walk, a good meal (with all the trimmings), if you can sleep without first taking a pill, if birds and flowers, mountains and sea still inspire you, you are a most fortunate individual and you should get down on your knees morning and night and thank the good Lord for his savin' and keepin' power. If you are young in years but already weary i..
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life
eighty
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Henry Miller |
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7186885
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We create our fate everyday
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Henry Miller |
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146291c
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Up on the Brooklyn Bridge a man is standing in agony, waiting to jump, or waiting to write a poem, or waiting for the blood to leave his vessels because if he advances another foot the pain of his love will kill him.
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suicide
suffering
poem
poetry
writing
love
blocks
brooklyn
artists-life
bridge
creativity
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Henry Miller |
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5099249
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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76803a2
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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.
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henry-miller
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Henry Miller |
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3e9fe4d
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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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224a7da
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When I look down into this fucked-out cunt of a whore I feel the whole world beneath me, a world tottering and crumbling, a world used up and polished like a leper's skull. If there were a man who dared to say all that he thought of this world there would not be left him a square foot of ground to stand on. When a man appears the world bears down on him and breaks his back. There are always too many rotten pillars left standing, too much fe..
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Henry Miller |
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e9f70ba
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I felt free and chained at the same time - like one feels just before election, when all the crooks have been nominated and you are beseeched to vote for the right man.
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Henry Miller |
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a4a92c1
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I used to think a bird couldn't fly if its wings got wet.
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Henry Miller |
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f70a350
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What I really hoped for, no doubt, was to come upon one of those lives which begin nowhere, which lead us through marshes and salt flats, trickling away, seemingly without plan, purpose or goal, and suddenly emerge, gushing like geysers, and never cease gushing, even in death.
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Henry Miller |
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1822024
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The world around me is dissolving leaving here and there spots of time. The world is a cancer eating itself away.
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time
existence
world
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Henry Miller |
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6920030
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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b9f9a29
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Her eyes were so big and bright, as if they saw more than they could comprehend. Bright with terror, and beneath the terror a limitless confusion. That's what made them so beautifully bright. You have to be crazy to see things so lucidly, so all at once. If you're great you can stay that way and people will believe in you, swear by you, turn the world upside down for you. But if you're only partly great, or just a nobody, then what happens ..
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Henry Miller |
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85de9d4
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On the meridian of time there is no injustice: there is only the poetry of motion creating the illusion of truth and drama. If at any moment anywhere one comes face to face with the absolute, that great sympathy which makes men like Gautama and Jesus seem divine freezes away; 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 ..
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Henry Miller |
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aa08e8a
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I study you so much to discover the possible flaws, the weak points, the danger zones. I don't find them--not any. That means I am in love, blind, blind. To be blind forever.
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Henry Miller |
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5a623d9
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I used to think then that all the tragic events of life were written down in books and that what went on outside was just diluted crap.
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books
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Henry Miller |
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5c85345
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Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown...
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Henry Miller |
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b5a8851
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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! And with the first step you make in this direction you realize that there is neither plus nor minus; you throw the skates away and swim. There is no suffering any more because there is nothing which can threaten your security. And there is no desire to be of help to others even, because why rob them of a privilege which must be..
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Henry Miller |
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bd15a95
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To make absolute, unconditional surrender to the woman one loves is to break every bond save the desire not to lose her, which is the most terrible bond of all
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Henry Miller |
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b79a422
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Until it is kindled by a spirit as flamingly alive as the one
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Henry Miller |