Henry Miller

“An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.”

“The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.”

“Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.”

“The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.”

“I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.”

“The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.”

“No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe.”

“The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.”

“Why are we so full of restraint? Why do we not give in all directions? Is it fear of losing ourselves? Until we do lose ourselves there is no hope of finding ourselves.”

“We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.”

“In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.”

“Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.”

“The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.”

“Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.”

“Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.”

“Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.”

“All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.”

“Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang's feeble imagination.”

“The real leader has no need to lead - he is content to point the way.”