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.)
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The moment one gives a close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world unto itself.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Beauty, Awareness, Perspective
Civilization is drugs, alcohol, engines of war, prostitution, machines and machine slaves, low wages, bad food, bad taste, prisons, reformatories, lunatic asylums, divorce, perversion, brutal sports, suicides, infanticide, cinema, quackery, demagogy, strikes, lockouts, revolutions, putsches, colonization, electric chairs, guillotines, sabotage, floods, famine, disease, gangsters, money barons, horse racing, fashion shows, poodle dogs, chow dogs, Siamese cats, condoms, peccaries, syphilis, gonorrhea, insanity, neuroses, etc., etc.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Civilization
I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive. A year ago, six months ago, I thought that I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am. Everything that was literature has fallen from me. There are no more books to be written, thank God. This then? This is not a book. This is libel, slander, and defamation of character. This is not a book, in the ordinary sense of the word. No, this is a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of Art, a kick in the pants of God, Man, Destiny, Time, Love, Beauty
—Henry Miller
Topics: Happiness, Authors & Writing
I will never again go to people under false pretenses even if it is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Integrity
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
Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Strength, Acceptance, Dreams
Perhaps I am still very much of an American. That is to say, naive, optimistic, gullible. In the eyes of a European, what am I but an American to the core, an American who exposes his Americanism like a sore. Like it or not, I am a product of this land of plenty, a believer in superabundance, a believer in miracles.
—Henry Miller
What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion. We may succeed in altering the face of the earth until it is unrecognizable even to the Creator, but if we are unaffected wherein lies the meaning?
—Henry Miller
The world is the mirror of myself dying.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Death
The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Acceptance, Discovery
Our diseases are our attachments.
—Henry Miller
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
One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Procrastination, Getting Going, Inaction
Nine-tenths of our sickness can be prevented by right thinking plus right hygiene—nine-tenths of it.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Health
The real leader has no need to direct-he is content to point the way.
—Henry Miller
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
—Henry Miller
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.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Reading
Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heart-ache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths. We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, to discover what is already there.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Confidence
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: Destiny
I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. I see a long night settling in and that mushroom which has poisoned the world withering at the roots.
—Henry Miller
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, Books, Literature
Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Books
Remorse is impotence, it will sin again. Only repentance is strong, it can end everything.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Forgiveness
Life, as it is called, is for most of us one long postponement.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Life, Procrastination
Actors die so loud.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Acting, Actors
Americans can eat garbage, provided you sprinkle it liberally with ketchup, mustard, chili sauce, Tabasco sauce, cayenne pepper, or any other condiment which destroys the original flavor of the dish
—Henry Miller
The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.
—Henry Miller
We create our fate every day … most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Friends and Friendship, Positive Attitudes, Health, Optimism, Time Management, Self-reliance, Luck
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
The only peace, the only security, is in fulfillment.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Security
The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Heroes, Action, Heroes/Heroism
Who hates the Jews more than the Jew?
—Henry Miller
Topics: Judaism, Religion, Jews
The real enemy can always be met and conquered, or won over. Real antagonism is based on love, a love which has not recognized itself.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Enemies
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
True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.
—Henry Miller
We have been educated to such a fine—or dull—point that we are incapable of enjoying something new, something different, until we are first told what it’s all about. We don’t trust our five senses; we rely on our critics and educators, all of whom are failures in the realm of creation. In short, the blind lead the blind. It’s the democratic way.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Critics, Criticism
Every man has his own destiny; the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
—Henry Miller
Topics: Destiny
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