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"To paint is to love again, live again, see again. To get up at the crack of dawn in order to take a peek at the water colors one did the day before, or even a few hours before, is like stealing a look at the beloved while she sleeps. The thrill is even greater if one has first to draw back the curtains. How they glow in the cold light of early dawn! Is there any writer who rouses himself at daybreak in order to read the pages of his manuscript? Perish the thought!"
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"Movies can be instruments of enlightenment."

"The goal of art was the vital expression of self."

"The mediator of the inexpressible is the work of art."

"Spent the fortnight gone in the music room reworking my year's fragments into a 'sextet for overlapping soloists': piano, clarinet, 'cello, flute, oboe, and violin, each in its own language of key, scale, and color. In the first set, each solo is interrupted by its successor; in the second, each interruption is recontinued, in order. Revolutionary or gimmicky? Shan't know until it's finished, and by then it'll be too late."

"When whisperedwhat an exquisitesong, it makes-your name."

"A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest. If you're not haunted by something, as by a dream, a vision, or a memory, which are involuntary, you're not interested or even involved."

"It would have to be connected with performance art somehow, either in the front of the house or the back. I was myopic about this from fourth grade on."
Explore more quotes by Henry Miller

"One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life."

"You can forgive a young cunt anything. A young cunt doesn't have to have brains. They're better without brains. But an old cunt, even if she's brilliant, even if she's the most charming woman in the world, nothing makes any difference. A young cunt is an investment; an old cunt is a dead loss. All they can do for you is buy you things. But that doesn't put meat on their arms or juice between their legs."

"Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery."

"The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble."

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

"1) Work on one thing at a time until finished.2) Start no more new books, add no more new material to "Black Spring."3) Don't be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.4) Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!5) When you can't create you can work.6) Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.7) Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.8) Don't be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure."

"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."

"What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act according to their beliefs."

"One of the reasons why so few of us ever act, instead of react, is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses."

"Literature coming from the cold corpse of a whore is the last thing to be served in bed."
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