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Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.

Henry Miller

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Henry Miller
Age: 88 †
Born: 1891
Born: December 26
Died: 1980
Died: June 7
Essayist
Novelist
Painter
Writer
New York City
New York
Genri Miller
Henri Miller
Phineas Flapdoodle
Books
Forget
Write
Book
Writing
Think
Thinking

More quotes by Henry Miller

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It does me good to write a letter which is not a response to a demand, a gratuitous letter, so to speak, which has accumulated in me like the waters of a reservoir.
Henry Miller
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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.
Henry Miller
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What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.
Henry Miller
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The best technique is none at all.
Henry Miller
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If the poet can no longer speak for society, but only for himself, then we are at the last ditch.
Henry Miller
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We must not just be in the world and above the world, but also of the world. To love it for what it is... is the only task. Avoid it and you are lost. Lose yourself in it, and you are free.
Henry Miller
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By choosing to live above the ordinary level we create extraordinary problems for ourselves.
Henry Miller
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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.
Henry Miller
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The life of a creator is not the only life nor perhaps the most interesting which a man leads. There is a time for play and a time for work, a time for creation and a time for lying fallow. And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean-when boredom seems the very stuff of life.
Henry Miller
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Develop an interest in life as you see it the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
Henry Miller
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Better to separate than never to marry.
Henry Miller
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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.
Henry Miller
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The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.
Henry Miller
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No man would set a word down on paper if he had the courage to live out what he believed in.
Henry Miller
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How different the new order would be if we could consult the veteran instead of the politician.
Henry Miller
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Who wants to be a hundred? What's the point of it? A short life and a merry one is far better than a long one sustained by fear, caution, and perpetual medical surveillance.
Henry Miller
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Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.
Henry Miller
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I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.
Henry Miller
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What I want is to open up. I want to know what's inside me. I want everybody to open up. I'm like an imbecile with a can opener in his hand, wondering where to begin-- to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I'm sure of it.
Henry Miller
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Until he [man] has become fully human, until he learns to conduct himself as a member of the earth, he will continue to create gods who will destroy him. The tragedy of Greece lies not in the destruction of a great culture but in the abortion of a great vision.
Henry Miller