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2d52e86
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I was like Robinson Crusoe on the island of Tobago. For hours at a stretch I would lie in the sun doing nothing, thinking of nothing. To keep the mind empty is a feat, a very healthful feat too. 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. The book-learning..
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keep-calm
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Henry Miller |
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ad18e71
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Christ will never more come down to earth nor will there be any law-giver, nor will murder cease nor theft, nor rape, and yet... and yet one expects something, something terrifyingly marvellous and absurd, perhaps a cold lobster with mayonnaise served gratis, perhaps an invention, like the electric light, like television, only more devastating, more soul rending, an invention unthinkable that will bring a shattering calm and void, not the c..
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Henry Miller |
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c404bdc
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n lmwt hw shy wkwn lmr mytan hw shy akhr
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Henry Miller |
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33cec4d
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I look out again at the sun-my first full gaze. It is blood-red and men are walking about on rooftops. Everything above the horizon is clear to me. It is like Easter Sunday. Death is behind me and birth too. I am going to live now among the life maladies. I am going to live the spiritual life of the pygmy, the secret life of the little man in the wilderness of the bush. Inner and outer have changed places. Equilibrium is no longer the goal-..
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Henry Miller |
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c764e67
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At the opera, the music makes no sense; here in the street it has just the right demented touch to give it poignancy.
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Henry Miller |
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5bf1a1b
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I am the gorilla who feels his wings growing, a giddy gorilla in the centre of a satin-like emptiness; the night too grows like an electrical plant, shooting white-hot buds into velvet black space. I am the black space of the night in which the buds break with anguish, a starfish swimming on the frozen dew of the moon. I am the germ of a new insanity, a freak dressed in intelligible language, a sob that is buried like a splinter in the quic..
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Henry Miller |
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428ce35
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No quiero ser razonable ni logico. !Los detesto! Quiero reventar de risa, quiero divertirme. Quiero hacer algo. Quiero sentarme en un cafe y pasarme el dia hablando. Dios, nosotros tenemos nuestros defectos...pero tenemos entusiasmo. Es mejor cometer errores que no hacer nada.
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Henry Miller |
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80e5f6e
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I suppose it was the worst book any man has ever written. It was a colossal tome and faulty from start to finish. But it was my first book and I was in love with it. If I had had the money, as Gide had, I would have published it at my own expense. If I had had the courage that Whitman had, I would have peddled it from door to door. Everybody I showed it to said it was terrible. I was urged to give up the idea of writing. I had to learn, as ..
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Henry Miller |
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8afc3b0
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Down to the closest friend every man is a potential murderer. Often it wasn't necessary to bring out the gun or the lasso or the branding iron-- they had found subtler and more devilish ways of torturing and killing their own. For me the most excruciating agony was to have the word annihilated before it even left my mouth. I learned, by bitter experience, to hold my tongue; I learned to sit in silence, and even smile, when actually I was fo..
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Henry Miller |
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da2d87a
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Such a healthy, simple, approving glance as if he were saying to himself: "Ah, spring is coming!" And God knows, when spring comes to Paris the humblest mortal alive must feel that he dwells in paradise."
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Henry Miller |
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cbb7797
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But there was a streak in me, a perverse one, which prevented me from giving the essential self. This "perversity" always voiced itself thus: "Reveal your true self and they will mutilate you."
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Henry Miller |
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c4a19d8
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If you were married to a dipsomaniac, would you pretend that the mania for alcohol was perfectly harmless?
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Henry Miller |
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2ed51b9
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I could put up with heartbreaks and abortions and busted romances, but I had to have something under my belt to carry on, and I wanted something nourishing, something appetizing. I felt exactly like Jesus Christ would have felt if he had been taken down from the cross and not permitted to die in the flesh. I am sure that the shock of crucifixion would have been so great that he would have suffered a complete amnesia as regards humanity. I a..
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Henry Miller |
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46ef042
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This was the sort of ebullience and elan I prayed for when I felt the desire to write. I used to sit down and wait for this to happen. But it never did happen- not this way. It happened afterwards, sometimes when I had left the machine and gone for a walk. Yes, suddenly it would come on, like an attack, pell-mell, from every direction, a veritable inundation, an avalanche- and there I was, helpless, miles away from the typewriter, not a pie..
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writing
truth
henry-miller
sexus
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Henry Miller |
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8c9f5df
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I like the monologue even more than the duet, when it is good. It's like watching a man write a book expressly for you: he writes it, reads it aloud, acts it, revises it, savours it, enjoys it, enjoys your enjoyment of it, and then tears it up and throws it to the winds. It's a sublime performance, because while he's going through with it you are God for him-unless you happen to be an insensitive and impatient dolt. But in that case the kin..
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Henry Miller |
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c654257
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The great incestuous wish is to flow on, one with time, to merge the great image of the beyond with the here and now. A fatuous, suicidal wish that is constipated by words and paralyzed by thought.
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Henry Miller |
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a6a5620
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I didn't lack thoughts nor words nor the power of expression-- I lacked something much more important: the lever which would shut off the juice. The bloody machine wouldn't stop, that was the difficulty. I was not only in the middle of the current but the current was running through me and I had no control over it whatever.
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Henry Miller |
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fe0704c
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Every day the choice is presented to us, in a thousand different ways, to live up to the spirit which is in us or to deny it. Whenever we talk about right and wrong we are turning the light of scrutiny upon our neighbors instead of upon ourselves. We judge in order not to be judged. We uphold the law, because it is easier than to defy it. We are all lawbreakers, all criminals, all murderers, at heart. It is not our business to get after the..
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spirit
morality
law
judgment
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Henry Miller |
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e2b39c1
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Over and over again I have said that there is no way out of the present impasse. If we were wide awake we would be instantly struck by the horrors which surround us ... We would drop our tools, quit our jobs, deny our obligations, pay no taxes, observe no laws, and so on. Could the man or woman who is thoroughly awakened possibly do the crazy things which are now expected of him or her every moment of the day?
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philosophical
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Henry Miller |
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2369d45
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It is getting toward dinner time and people are straggling back to their rooms with that weary, dejected air which comes from earning a living honestly.
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Henry Miller |
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2e100fc
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Overcoming the world. And thus finding it. For we must not only be in it and above it, but of it too. To love it for what it is- how difficult! And yet it's the first, the only task. Evade it, and you are lost. Lose yourself in it and you are free.
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Henry Miller |
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58defea
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A beautiful nap this afternoon that put velvet between my vertebrae.
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sleep
rest
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Henry Miller |
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450b760
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More and more the world resembles an entomologist's dream. The earth is moving out of its orbit, the axis has shifted; from the north the snow blows down in huge knife-blue drifts. A new ice age is setting in, the transverse sutures are closing up and everywhere throughout the corn belt the fetal world is dying, turning to dead mastoid. Inch by inch the deltas are drying out and the river beds are smooth as glass. A new day is dawning, a me..
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Henry Miller |
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d1858f5
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For the man in the paddock, whose duty is is to sweep up manure, the supreme terror is the possibility of a world without horses. To tell him that it is disgusting to spend one's life shoveling up hot
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money
work
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Henry Miller |
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69a263c
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No matter where you go, no matter what you touch, there is cancer and syphilis. It is written in the sky; it flames and dances, like an evil portent. It has eaten into our souls and we are nothing but a dead thing like the moon.
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Henry Miller |
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8805d92
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If it be knowledge or wisdom one is seeking, then one had better go direct to the source. And the source is not the scholar or philosopher, not the master, saint, or teacher, but life itself - direct experience of life. The same is true for art. Here, too, we an dispense with "the masters."
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Henry Miller |
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661e836
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Death was more like what we went through in the park: two people walking side by side in the mist, rubbing against trees and bushes, and not a word between them. It was something emptier than the name itself and yet right and peaceful, dignified, if you like. It was not a continuation of life, but a leap in the dark and no possibility of ever coming back, not even as a grain of dust. And that was right and beautiful, I said to myself, becau..
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Henry Miller |
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688fd22
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Naturally, I said. You're always the same person. You don't change from one milieu to another. You're honest and open. You could get along anywhere with any group or class or race. But most people aren't that way. Most people are conscious of race, color, religion, nationality, and so on. To me all peoples are mysterious when I look at them closely. I can detect their differences much easier than their kinship. In fact, I like the distincti..
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Henry Miller |
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c45f92c
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She discovered what others know only too well in a cynical way, that people prefer to believe in and worship a god who is remote rather than live out the godlike nature which is their inherent being.
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Henry Miller |
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e8d4cbf
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Sweet or bitter, I am now convinced that all experience is enriching and rewarding. Above all, instructive.
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Henry Miller |
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35c58fb
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We have no need for genius - genius is dead. We have need for strong hands, for spirits who are willing to give up the ghost and put on flesh...
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Henry Miller |
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2ff139b
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Si tuviera la oportunidad de ser Dios, la rechazaria. Si tuviese la oportunidad de ser una estrella, la rechazaria. La oportunidad mas maravillosa que ofrece la vida es la de ser humano. Abarca todo el universo. Incluye el conocimiento de la muerte, del que ni siquiera Dios goza.
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Henry Miller |
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2751aac
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When into the womb of time everything is again withdrawn chaos will be restored and chaos is the score upon which reality is written.
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Henry Miller |
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5476ec6
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One never thinks of China, but it is there all the time on the tips of your fingers and it makes your nose itchy; and long afterward, when you have forgotten almost what a firecracker smells like, you wake up one day with gold leaf choking you and the broken pieces of punk waft back their pungent odor and the bright red wrappers give you a nostalgia for a people and a soil you have never known, but which is in your blood, mysteriously there..
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Henry Miller |
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290c569
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I am a man of the old world, a seed that was transplanted by the wind, a seed which failed to blossom in the mushroom oasis of America. I belong on the heavy tree of the past. My allegiance, physical and spiritual, it is with the men of Europe, those who were once Franks, Gauls, Vikings, Huns, Tatars, what not. The climate for my body and soul is here where there is quickness and corruption. I am proud not to belong in this century.
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Henry Miller |
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4bc2904
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In Europe one gets used to doing nothing. You sit on your ass and whine all day. You get contaminated. You rot.
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europeans
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Henry Miller |
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21396d3
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There are people who cannot resist the desire to get into a cage with wild beasts and be mangled.
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Henry Miller |
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b77e0f7
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What most people fear when they think of old age is the inability to make new friends. If one ever had the faculty of making friends one never loses it however old one grows. Next to love friendship, in my opinion, is the most valuable thing life has to offer.
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love
old-age
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Henry Miller |
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466b479
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The other night I took her on-out of pity-and what do you think the crazy bitch had done to herself? She had shaved it clean ... not a speck of hair on it. Did you ever have a woman who shaved her twat? It's repulsive, ain't it? And it's funny, too. Sort of mad like. It doesn't look like a twat any more: it's like a dead clam or something." He describes to me how, his curiosity aroused, he got out of bed and searched for his flashlight. "I ..
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Henry Miller |
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ee6859a
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One can fight evil but against stupidity one is helpless.
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stupidity
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Henry Miller |
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a1ede80
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Somehow the realization that nothing was to be hoped for had a salutary effect upon me. For weeks and months, for years, in fact, all my life I had been looking forward to something happening, some intrinsic event that would alter my life, and now suddenly, inspired by the absolute hopelessness of everything, I felt relieved, felt as though a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders. At dawn I parted company with the young Hindu, afte..
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Henry Miller |
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fb35f52
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At no time in the history of man has the world been so full of pain and anguish. Here and there, however, we meet with individuals who are untouched, unsullied, by the common grief. We say of them that they have died to the world. They live in the moment, fully, and the radiance which emanates from them is a perpetual song of joy [...] like the clown, we go through the motions, forever simulating, forever postponing the grand event- we die ..
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Henry Miller |
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0e66ff6
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V edin zapustial kvartal, k'deto ulitsite nosiat imena na filosofi, az brodekh v tolkova pl'tna i s'shchevremenno tolkova kadifena tishina, ta mi se struvashe, che v'zdukh't e izp'lnen s's striti na prakh zvezdi, chiiato svetlina izdava nedolovim zvuk.
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Henry Miller |
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05f3fe9
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as Sylvester says, a man who has never been afflicted with a neurosis does not know the meaning of suffering.
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Henry Miller |