“when i am able to make the written word convey the full essence of truth and sincerity there will cease to exist any discrepancy between the man and the writer, between what i am and what i do or say. This, in my humble opinion, is the highest goal an author can set himself. The same aim – unification – is implicit in all religious striving.” (57-58)
“every element or aspect of life, however necessitated, however questionable (to us), is susceptible to conversion, and indeed must be converted to other levels, in accordance with our growth and understanding. The effort to eliminate the ‘repulsive’ aspects of existence, which is the obsession of moralists, is not only absurd but futile. One may succeed in repressing ugly, ‘sinful’ thoughts and desires, impulses and urges, but the results are patently disastrous…To live out one’s desires and, in so doing, subtly alter their nature, is the aim of every individual who aspires to evolve.” (58)
“the interlude called ‘The Land of Fuck’ [in Tropic of Cancer] is for me the high-water mark in the fusion of symbol, myth and metaphor.” (60)
“The difficulty: to adapt to that desolate plane where only one’s own powers will sustain one. From this point on the problem is to write retrospectively and act forwardly.” (62)
“Like every man, i am my own worst enemy. Unlike most men, however, I also know that I am my own saviour. I know freedom means responsibility. I know too how easily desire may be converted to deed. Even when I close my eyes I must be careul how I dream and of what, for now only the thinnest veil separates dream from reality.” (62)
“the normal accounts for nothing more than what is true, statistically, for the great mass of men and women. What may be normal, sane, healthful for vast majority affords us no criterion of behaviour where the exceptional individual is concerned. The man of genius, whether through his work or by personal example, seems ever to be blazing the truth that each one is a law unto himself, and that the way to fulfillment is through recognition and realization of the fact that we are each and all unique.” (62, 64)
“Real life begins when we are alone, face to face with our unknown self. What happens when we come together is determined by our inner soliloquies. The crucial and truly pivotal events which mark our way are the fruits of silence and solitude. We attribute much to chance meetings, refer to them as turning points in our life, but these encounters could never have occurred has we not made ourselves ready for them. If we possessed more awareness, these fortuitous encounters would yield still greater rewards. It is only at certain unpredictable times that we are fully attuned, fully expectant, and thus in a position to receive the favours of fortune. The man who is thoroughly awake knows that every ‘happning’ is packed with significance. He knows that not only is his own life being latered but that eventually the entire world must be affected.” (64)
“Our whole way of life is rooted in mutual slaughter. Never has there been a world so avid for security, and never has life been more insecure. To protect ourselves, we invent the most fantastic instruments of destruction, which prove to be boomerangs. No one seems to believe in the power of love, the only dependable power. No one believes in his neighbor, or in himself, let alone a supreme being. Fear, envy, suspicion are rampant everywhere. Ergo, fuck your brains out while there is still time!
“For some sex leads to sainthood; for others it is the road to hell. In this respect it is like everything else in life – a person, a thing, an event, a relationship. All depends on one’s point of view. To make life more beautiful, more wonderful, more deep and satisfying, we must gaze with fresh, clear vision upon every contributing element of life. If there is something wrong about our attitude towards sex then there is something wrong about our attitude towards bread, towards money, towards work, towards play, towards everything. How can one enjoy a good sex life if he has a distorted, unhealthy attitude toward other aspects of life?” (99-100)
“It is difficult, almost absurd, to tell emotional cripples that self-expression is the all important. Not what is expressed nor how, but just expressing oneself. One feels like urging them to try anything, if it will further self-liberation. There is nothing in itself, we have been told time and again, which is wrong or evil. It is fear of doing wrong, the fear of committing this or that act, which is wrong…
“Today we seem animated almost exclusively by fear. We fear even that which is good, that which is healthy, that which is joyous.” (100)
“Death triumphs only in service of life.” (101)
“In telling the story of my life I have frequently discarded the chronological sequence in favour of the circular or spiral form of progression. The time sequence which relates one event to another in linear fashion strikes me as falsely imitative of the true rhythm of life. The facts and events which form the chain of one’s life are but starting points along the path of self-discovery. I have endeavoured to plot the inner pattern, follow the potential being who was constantly deflected from his course, who circled around himself, was becalmed for long stretches, sank to the bottom, or vainly essayed to reach the lonely, desolate summits. I have tried to capture the quintessential moments wherein whatever happened produced profound alterations.” (101)
“what it is that goes on moment by moment in a man’s life is forever unfathomable. No man can possibly relate the whole story, no matter how limited a fragment of life he may choose to dwell on.” (102)
“In describing facts, events, relationships, even trivia, I am constantly endeavouring to make the reader aware of the all-pervasiveness of that dark, mysterious realm in the absence of which nothing could happen.” (102)
“I have learned to live with myself. And I like it.
“We go our way picturing the world to be thus and so. We move unthinkingly against a panorama which changes kaleidoscopically. And as we drag along we carry with us dead images of live moments in the past. Until the day we meet – her. Suddenly the world is no longer the same. Everything has altered. But how can the world be altered in the wink of an eye? It is an expereince we all know, yet it brings us no closer to truth. We go on knocking at the door…” (104)
“If we stopped to think about the ceaseless activity which informs the earth and the heavens about us, would we ever give ourselves up to thoughts of death? If we deeply realized that even in death this frenzied activity proceeds ceaselessly and remorselessly, would we withhold ourselves in any way? The gods of old came down to earth to mingle with human kind, to fornicate with animals and trees and with the elements themselves. 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 can be no hope of finding ourselves. We are of the world, and to enter fully into the world we must first lose ourselves in it. The path to heaven leads through hell, it is said. What path we take is of no importance, as long as we cease to tread cuatiously.” (105)
“Today the individual is virtually extinct. Today we have the robot, end product of the machine age. Man functioning as a cog in a machine over which he has no control.” (108)
“From generation to generation it will continue, until one lone creature escapes the hands of the vivisectionist and starts a word of his own. It will take a very, very cunning creature to make the escape.” (113)
“We have tried all the other ways, and we have been brought back again and again to a state of utter misery, utter helplessness.” (113-114)
“It is my conviction that what we choose to call civilization did not begin at any of those points in time which our savants, with their limited knowledge and understanding, fix upon as dawns. I see no end and no beginning anywhere. I see life and death advancing simultaneously, like twins joined at the waist. I see that at no matter what stage of evolution or devolution, no matter what the conditioins, the climate, the weather, no matter whether there be peace or war, ignorance or culture, idolatry or spirituality, there is only and always the struggle of the individual, his triumph or defeat, his emancipation or enslavement, his liberation or liquidation. This struggle, whose nature is cosmic, defies all analysis, whether scientific, metaphysical, religious or historical.
“The sexual drama is a partial aspect of the greater drama perpetually enacted in the soul of man. As the individual becomes more integrated, more unified, the sex problem falls into its proper perspective. The genitals are impressed, so to speak, into the service of the whole being. There is simultaneous procreation in all spheres. What is new, original and fecund issues only from a complete entity. One can fuck not only with heart and soul, as we say, but as a new being. A new being is a product of mind, created through desire, love and atonement, not through gestation in the womb. The as yet unborn are all around us, locked in the womb of time; when our hunger for true life deepens we feel their presence and make way for their coming.” (115)
“All goes hand in hand. Sanity keeps no truck with compromise and artificiality. If we live like weasels, we fuck like weasels; if we behave like monsters, we die like monsters. Now we eat, sleep, work, play – and even fuck! – like automatons. It is the Land of Nod, with everyone spinning like tops.
“To live one must not only be awake but awakened. If we were truly awake we would be stunned by the horror of everyday life. No one in his right senses could possibly do the crazy things which are now demanded of us every moment of the day.” (115-116)
“All that matters is that the miraculous becomes the norm.” (118)
“Meaningful acts require no stir. When things are going to wrack and ruin the most purposeful act may be to sit still. The individual who succeeds in realizing and expressing the truth which is in him may be said to have performed an act more potent than the destruction of an empire. It is not always necessary, moreover, to mouth the truth. Though the world crumble and dissolve truth abiddes.
“In the beginning was the Word. Man acts it out. He is the act, not the actor.” (119)
“To suppose that, unless restrained by fear of punishment, men will set about killing and plundering, buggering and torturing ad infinitum, is to slander the human race. Given only half a chance, men will express the best that is in them. Certainly outbursts of violence are bound to occur whenever there is a new lease of freedom. Some kind of crude justice is bound to assert itself whenever the scales have been tipped too far. Like it or not, there come times when some specimens of the race ask to be wiped out, and are wiped out, if only out of kindness, decency and reverence for those to come.” (121)
“There has never been a dream of life too splendid, too dazzling, to fit the picture of reality. Those who fear are doomed; those who doubt are lost. The Eden of the past is the Utopia of the future. Between stretches the endless present, the now, in which things are the way they are, and just because it is this and not otherwise we have all we desire, all we need, like the fish in the ocean…for it is an ocean we are swimming in, a vast and mighty deep, which embraces all we can ever know, ever realize…and is that not enough?” (122)
The World of Sex (1940) & Max and the White Phagocytes (1938)
Henry Miller
Olympia Press, Paris, 1959
Self Builder 