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I struggled in the beginning. I said I was going to write the truth, so help me God. And I thought I was. I found I couldn't. Nobody can write the absolute truth.

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
Help
Write
Helping
Struggled
Found
Absolutes
Thought
Absolute
Truth
Beginning
Writing
Couldn
Going
Nobody

More quotes by Henry Miller

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One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.
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Life is 440 horsepower in a 2-cylinder engine.
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A world without hope, but no despair
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Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient.
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A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition. Like money, books must be kept in constant circulation... A book is not only a friend, it makes friends for you. When you have possessed a book with mind and spirit, you are enriched. But when you pass it on you are enriched threefold.
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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, but you can't get permanently deloused.
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To imagine a new world is to live it daily, each thought, each glance, each step, each gesture, killing and recreating, death always a step in advance. To spit on the past is not enough. To proclaim the future is not enough. One must act as if the past were dead and the future unrealizable.
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A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there - that of the pulse, the heart beat.
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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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My understanding of the meaning of a book is that the book itself disappears from sight, that it is chewed alive, digested and incorporated into the system as flesh and blood which in turn creates new spirit and reshapes the world.
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I am positively against all this crap which is carried on first in the name of this thing, then in the name of that. I believe only in what is active, immediate, and personal.
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Don't look for miracles. You yourself are the miracle.
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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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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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The poet speaks adequately only when he speaks somewhat wildly... not with intellect alone, but with intellect inebriated by nectar.
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One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life.
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Next to love friendship, in my opinion, is the most valuable thing life has to offer.
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Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
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Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.
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For the artist to attach himself to his work, or identify himself with it, is suicidal.
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