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0374c8e
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Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those 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.
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Henry Miller |
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1614196
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Talk is only a pretext for other, subtler forms of communication. When the latter are inoperative speech becomes dead. If two people are intent upon communicating with one another it doesn't matter in the least how bewildering the talk becomes. People who insist upon clarity and logic often fail in making themselves understood. They are always-searching for a more perfect transmitter, deluded by the supposition that the mind is the only ins..
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talk
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Henry Miller |
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64e7141
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All my life I have felt a great kinship with the madman and the criminal. Practically all my life I have dwelt in big cities; I am unhappy, uneasy, unless I am in a big city. My feeling for Nature is limited to water, mountain and desert. These three form a trine which is more imperative, for me, than any spiritual alimentation. But in the city I am aware of another element which is beyond all these in power of fascination: the labyrinth. T..
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Henry Miller |
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b02e82b
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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19081da
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So quietly flows the Seine that one hardly notices its presence. It is always there, quiet and unobtrusive, like a great artery running through the human body. In the wonderful peace that fell over me itseemed as if I had climbed to the top of a high mountain; for a little while I would be able to look around me, to take in the meaning of the landscape. Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance they appear negligible; clo..
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Henry Miller |
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79e9e28
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It was the end for me. And yet not an end. In all the years which have since elapsed she remains the woman I loved and lost, the unattainable one [...] 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. --Henry Miller, Stand Still like the Hummingbird (1962)
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Henry Miller |
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76d9a91
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For seven years I went about, day and night, with only one thing on my mind - her. Were there a Christian so faithful to his God as I was to her we would all be Jesus Christs today.
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Henry Miller |
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bbee3b1
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Perhaps my grandfather was right, perhaps I was spoiled in the bud by the books I read. But it is ages since books have claimed me. For a long time now I have practically ceased to read. But the taint is still there. Now people are books to me. I read them from cover to cover and toss them aside. I devour them, one after the other. And the more I read, the more insatiable I become. There is no limit to it. There could be no end, and there w..
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Henry Miller |
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c48dcb0
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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80437b0
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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a9eec95
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Still I can't get it out of my mind what a discrepancy there is between ideas and living. A permanent dislocation, though we try to cover the two with a bright awning. And it won't go. Ideas have to be wedded to action; if there is no sex, no vitality in them, there is no action. Ideas cannot exist alone in the vacuum of the mind. Ideas are related to living: liver ideas, kidney ideas, interstitial ideas, etc. If it were only for the sake o..
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Henry Miller |
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2458a0f
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Most of the young men of talent whom I have met in this country give one the impression of being somewhat demented. Why shouldn't they? They are living amidst spiritual gorillas, living with food and drink maniacs, success-mongers, gadget innovators, publicity hounds. God, if I were a young man today, if I were faced with a world such as we have created, I would blow my brains out.
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Henry Miller |
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4fe7fa5
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Better to separate than never to marry.
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Henry Miller |
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466d70a
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The only difference between the Adamic man and the man of today is that the one was born to Paradise and the other has to create it.
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Henry Miller |
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33da326
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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.
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soldier
fight
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Henry Miller |
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e109b6b
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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b449f92
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The best stories I have heard were pointless, the best books those whose plot I can never remember, the best individuals those whom I never get anywhere with. Though it has been practised on me time and again I never cease to marvel how it happens that with certain individuals whom I know, within a few minutes after greeting them we are embarked on an endless voyage comparable in feeling and trajectory only to the deep middle dream which th..
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Henry Miller |
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5b14d47
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The most difficult adjustment an expatriate has to make, on returning to his native land, is in this realm of conversation. The impression one has, at first, is that there is no conversation. We do not talk--we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines, and digests.
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Henry Miller |
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880ce6e
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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cb638fc
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What is a fanatic? One who believes passionately and acts desperately upon what he believes. I was always believing in something and so getting into trouble. The more my hands were slapped the more firmly I believed. I believed- and the rest of the world did not! If it were only a question of enduring punishment one could go on believing till the end; but the way of the world is more insidious than that. Instead of being punished you are un..
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Henry Miller |
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c600628
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Au fond, les gens ne lisent pas ; ou, s'ils lisent, ils ne comprennent pas ; ou, s'ils comprennent, ils oublient.
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Henry Miller |
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1493395
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We are accustomed to think of ourselves as an emancipated people; we say that we are democratic, liberty-loving, free of prejudices and hatred. This is the melting-pot, the seat of a great human experiment. Beautiful words, full of noble, idealistic sentiment. Actually we are a vulgar, pushing mob whose passions are easily mobilized by demagogues, newspaper men, religious quacks, agitators and such like. To call this a society of free peopl..
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Henry Miller |
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22735e8
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Yes, he knows how to build a fire, but I know how to inflame a cunt.
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Henry Miller |
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60a29bd
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God knows, when spring comes to Paris the humbles mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise....it [is] the the intimacy with which his eye rests upon the scene. It [is] his Paris. A man does not need to be rich, nor even a citizen, to feel this way about Paris. Paris is filled with poor people - the proudest and filthiest lot of beggars that ever walked the earth... And yet they give the illusion of being at home. It is that which d..
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Henry Miller |
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301c34c
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the art of living involves the act of creation. The work of art is nothing. It is only the tangible, visible evidence of a way of life, which, if it is not crazy is certainly different from the accepted way of life... For the artist to attach himself to his work, or identify himself with it, is suicidal.
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Henry Miller |
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acfb2b3
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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656b9d7
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We live entirely in the past, nourished by dead thoughts, dead creeds, dead sciences. And it is the past which is engulfing us, not the future. The future always has and always will belong to--the poet.
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Henry Miller |
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ae78c16
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The world of men and women are making merry in the cemetery grounds. They are having sexual intercourse, God bless them, and I am alone in the Land of Fuck.
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Henry Miller |
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6b08ea6
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At night when I look at Boris' goatee lying on the pillow I get hysterical. O Tania, where now is that warm cunt of yours, those fat, heavy garters, those soft, bulging thighs? There is a bone in my prick six inches long. I will ream out every wrinkle in your cunt, Tania, big with seed. I will send you home to your Sylvester with an ache in your belly and your womb turned inside out. Your Sylvester! Yes, he knows how to build a fire, but I ..
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Henry Miller |
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bb45c76
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The act of dreaming, like a draught of fresh air in an abandoned house, situates the furniture of the mind in a new ambiance.
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Henry Miller |
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dbbce37
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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. I not only think about food all day, but I dream about it at night." --
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Henry Miller |
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f0890df
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But it is not emancipation that the great majority seeks. When pressed, most men will admit that it takes but little to be happy. (Not that they practice this wisdom!) Man craves happiness here on earth, not fulfillment, not emancipation. Are they utterly deluded, then, in seeking happiness? No, happiness is desirable, but it is a by-product, the result of a way of life, not a goal which is forever beyond one's grasp. Happiness is achieved ..
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Henry Miller |
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580dfca
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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. What stays him, usually, is the fear of the sacrifices involved. (Even to relinquish his chains seems like a sacrifice.) yet everyone knows that nothing is accomplished without sacrifice.
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Henry Miller |
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f7e15f9
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If you tell a guy in the street you're hungry you scare the shit out of him, he runs like hell. That's something I never understood. I don't understand it yet. The whole thing is so simple - you just say Yes when some one comes up to you. And if you can't say Yes you can take him by the arm and ask some other bird to help you out. Why you have to don a uniform and kill men you don't know, just to get that crust of bread, is a mystery to me...
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Henry Miller |
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2df22a7
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I stood before a mirror and said fearfully: "I want to see how I look in the mirror with my eyes closed." These wrods of Richter's, when I first came upon them, made an indescribable commotion in me. As did the following, which seems almost like a corollary of the above--from Novalis: The seat of the soul is where inner world and outer world touch each other. For nobody knows himself, if he is only himself and not also another one at the sa..
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Henry Miller |
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0ad6f2e
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People are like lice - they get under your skin and bury themselves there. You scratch and scratch until the blood comes out, but you can't permanently get 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, suicide. The atmosphere is saturated with disaster, frustration, futility. Scratch and scratch - until there is no skin left. However, t..
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Henry Miller |
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864b79c
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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.
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Henry Miller |
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f5a82d2
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I decided to let myself drift with the tide, to make not the least resistance to fate, no matter in what form it presented itself. Nothing that happened to me thus far had been sufficient to destroy me; nothing had been destroyed but my illusions(...)
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Henry Miller |
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9bcd0de
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The creative life! Ascension. Passing beyond oneself. Rocketing out into the blue, grasping at flying ladders, mounting, soaring, lifting the world up by the scalp, rousing the angels from their ethereal lairs, drowning in stellar depths, clinging to the tails of comets. Nietzsche had written of it ecstatically --and then swooned forward into the mirror to die in root and flower. <> he wrote, and then sudde..
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Henry Miller |
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dd3af71
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The great ones do not set up offices, charge fees, give lectures, or write books. Wisdom is silent, and the most effective propaganda for truth is the force of personal example. The great ones attract disciples, lesser figures whose mission is to preach and to teach. These are gospelers who, unequal to the highest task, spend their lives in converting others. The great ones are indifferent, in the profoundest sense. They don't ask you to be..
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Henry Miller |
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85a21be
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lky y`rf lnsn lslm yjb 'n yjrb lSr`, `lyh 'n ymr blmrHl@ lbTwly@ qbl 'n ytmkn mn ltSrf kHkym, yjb 'n ySbH DHy@ nf`lth qbl 'n ytmkn mn lt`ly `lyh
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Henry Miller |
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cb1f32c
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Looking back upon my career, I see myself as a person capable of undertaking almost any task, any vocation. It was the monotony and sterility of the other outlets which drove me to desperation. I demanded a realm in which I should be both master and slave at the same time: the world of art is the only such realm. I entered it without any apparent talent, a thorough novice, incapable, awkward, tongue-tied, almost paralyzed by fear and appreh..
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Henry Miller |
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383acc2
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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, in what way, because of what concatenation of events or circumstances, and still be happy, be happy in the being and the knowing, well that is beyond happiness, that is bliss, and if you have any sense you ought to kill yourself on tire spot and be done with it. And that's how I was-except that I did..
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Henry Miller |
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cfa5d47
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There's something depraved about screwing a woman who doesn't give a fuck about it. It heats your blood..." And then, after a moment's meditation-- "Can you imagine what she'd be like if she had any feelings?"
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Henry Miller |