Henry Valentine Miller (1891–1980) was an American novelist whose works achieved notoriety for their use of sexually explicit and obscene language. His two most famous novels, Tropic of Cancer (1934) and Tropic of Capricorn (1939,) were prohibited from publication and sale in the United States and Britain for many years.
Born and brought up in Brooklyn, New York City, Miller studied briefly at City College of New York and then held various jobs in New York. He devoted himself to writing in 1924 and, in 1930, moved to Paris, where he lived until 1940. There, he published Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, and Black Spring (1936.)
Upon returning to America, Miller completed a yearlong road trip across the United States and published a highly critical account of his impression of the U.S. during a time of chauvinism, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare (1945.) He settled in Big Sur, California.
Many of Miller’s works are autobiographical. They were explicitly sexual, and he had to overcome many denunciations from censors. The American editions of the Tropics were not published until the early 1960s. The books were charged with obscenity and were the subject of 60 court cases. In 1964, the Supreme Court ruled in support of the books’ publication, ending censorship based on obscenity in America.
Miller’s other notable works were The Colossus of Maroussi (1941,) and The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy of novels: Sexus (1949,) Plexus (1953) and Nexus (1960.) The volumes of his correspondence include those with Lawrence Durrell (1963,) to Anaïs Nin (1965,) and with Wallace Fowlie (1975.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Henry Miller
If we are always arriving and departing, it is also true that we are eternally anchored. One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Attitude, Travel, Tourism
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
Topics: Letters
The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Security, Serenity, Safety
Actors die so loud.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Acting, Actors
The man who is forever disturbed about the condition of humanity either has no problems of his own or has refused to face them.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Humanity, Humankind
An artist is always alone—if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Solitude
There are lone figures armed only with ideas, sometimes with just one idea, who blast away whole epochs in which we are enwrapped like mummies. Some are powerful enough to resurrect the dead. Some steal on us unawares and put a spell over us which it takes centuries to throw off. Some put a curse on us, for our stupidity and inertia, and then it seems as if God himself were unable to lift it.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Vision, Prophecy
You can travel fifty thousand miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Eating, Food
The world itself is pregnant with failure, is the perfect manifestation of imperfection, of the consciousness of failure.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Failure
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.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Reading, Literature, Books
Moralities, ethics, laws, customs, beliefs, doctrines—these are of trifling import. All that matters is that the miraculous become the norm.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Miracles
The loss of sex polarity is part and parcel of the larger disintegration, the reflex of the soul’s death, and coincident with the disappearance of great men, great deeds, great causes, great wars, etc.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Men & Women
Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid, or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is.
—Henry Miller
The American ideal is youth—handsome, empty youth.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Youth
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous, unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Courage, Growth
And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?
—Henry Miller
Topics: Potential
Like ships, men flounder time and time again.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Resolve, Perseverance, Endurance
I have always looked upon decay as being just as wonderful and rich an expression of life as growth.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Age
Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don’t take it too seriously.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Music
Man has demonstrated that he is master of everything—except his own nature.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Humanity, Human Nature
Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Books
We do not talk—we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Conversation
To live without killing is a thought which could electrify the world, if men were only capable of staying awake long enough to let the idea soak in.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Murder
Obscenity is a cleansing process, whereas pornography only adds to the murk.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Swearing, Vulgarity, Profanity
Every genuine boy is a rebel and an anarch. If he were allowed to develop according to his own instincts, his own inclinations, society would undergo such a radical transformation as to make the adult revolutionary cower and cringe.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Children
Honest criticism means nothing: what one wants is unrestrained passion, fire for fire.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Criticism, Critics
No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Inspiration, Destiny
We create our fate every day … most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Time Management, Fortune, Friends and Friendship, Positive Attitudes, Self-reliance, Luck, Value of a Day, Health, Optimism
Every genuine boy is a rebel and an anarch. If he were allowed to develop according to his own instincts, his own inclinations, society would undergo such a radical transformation as to make the adult revolutionary cower and cringe.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Children
I didn’t have to think up so much as a comma or a semicolon; it was all given, straight from the celestial recording room. Weary, I would beg for a break, an intermission, time enough, let’s say, to go to the toilet or take a breath of fresh air on the balcony. Nothing doing!
—Henry Miller
Topics: Inspirational, Inspiration
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