15 Henry Miller Quotes to Revive the Artist in You
15 Henry Miller Quotes to Revive the Artist in You
And my top five favorite Henry Miller books
“I had observed that the men who were most in life, who were molding life, who were life itself, ate little, slept little, owned little or nothing. They had no illusions about duty... or the preservation of the State. They were interested in truth and in truth alone. They recognized only one kind of activity - creation.”
“In any age it is only a few rare individuals, the truly creative spirits, who possess seed-bearing possibilities. And our age, so near to exhaustion and sterility, it is the very soil itself which needs fecundating. Out of the dying forms there must emerge a new living rhythm. And whatever hope their lies in the future -a distant future- lies inevitably in the appearance and the death, the continuous rejection and crucifixion, I might say, of these lone tragic individuals. For in their deaths lie the fertile seeds of the new forms to come.”
"The role which the artist plays in society is to revive the primitive, anarchic instincts which have been sacrificed for the illusion of living in comfort… It is not the most comfortable life in the world but I know that it is life, and I am not going to trade it for an anonymous life in the brotherhood of man—which is either sure death, or quasi-death, or at the very best cruel deception."
“Who but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination? The others - priest, teacher, saint, statesman, warrior - hold us to the path of history. They keep us chained to the rock, that the vultures may eat out our hearts. It is the artist who has the courage to go against the crowd; he is the unrecognized "hero of our time" - and of all time.”
"...if he is an artist, he will be compelled to make sacrifices which worldly people find absurd and unnecessary. In following the inner light he will inevitably choose... poverty. And, if he has in him the makings of a great artist, he may renounce everything, even his art."
“To live beyond the pale, to work for the pleasure of working, to grow old gracefully while retaining one’s faculties, one’s enthusiasms, one’s self respect, one has to establish other values than those endorsed by the mob. It takes an artist to make this breach in the wall. An artist is primarily one who has faith in himself. He does not respond to the normal stimuli: he is neither a drudge nor a parasite. He lives to express himself and in so doing enriches the world.”
"When man becomes fully conscious of his powers, his role, his destiny, he is an artist and he ceases his struggle with reality. He becomes a traitor to the human race... he has become permanently out of step with the rest of humanity…he transmutes his real experience of life into spiritual equations."
"A good artist must also have a streak of insanity in him, if by insanity is meant an exaggerated inability to adapt. The individual who can adapt to this mad world of to-day is either a nobody or a sage. In the one case he is immune to art and in the other he is beyond it."
"Reality is not protected or defended by laws, proclamations, ukases, cannons and armadas. Reality is that which is sprouting all the time out of death and disintegration...Those who are partly aware are the creators; those who are fully aware are the gods and they move among us silent and unknown. The function of the artist, who is only one type of creator, is to wake us up."
"What irony to inform the artist what is wrong with his work--as if that mattered! The artist speaks out of his inner certainty, and no matter how far astray he may seem to go, no matter how wild, how erratic his words, he is always a thousand times more right, more true, than those who presume to judge him. If he is an artist. As for the rest, those who call themselves artists, they do not matter."
"To prove that he is 'as good as the next man' means little or nothing to one who is an artist. It was his 'otherness' which made him an artist and, given the chance, he will make his fellow-man other too. Sooner or later, in one way or another, he is bound to rub his neighbors the wrong way. Unlike the ordinary fellow, he will throw everything to the winds when the urge seizes him...This, to the average citizen, particularly the good citizen, is preposterous and unthinkable."
“The artist is the opposite of the politically minded individual, the opposite of the reformer, the opposite of the idealist. The artist does not tinker with the universe, he recreates it out of his own experience and understanding of life.”
"Artists never thrive in colonies. Ants do. What the budding artist needs is the privilege of wrestling with his problems in solitude-- and now and then a piece of red meat."
"The value of the artist is that he refuses to find a solution and instead revives the fundamental problems. The passionate infusion of his personality revitalizes the problems and renews our enthusiasm, our taste for struggle, therefore our interest in life."
“No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world.”
Below are my top 5 favorite Henry Miller books:
Miller's books and attitudinal disposition are indispensable.
I always take these grandiose versions of the artist with a grain of salt. Not because there isn't merit in pushing against the grain, questioning the State, or easy presumptions of life (see superficial beauty, wealth hoarding, etc), but because it creates a version of writing that feels intimidating. As a woman who comes from a working-class background, I certainly never saw myself in this god-like light when I was younger and so put off even attempting to put pen to paper. I mean, I'm sure the main reason why he made these assertions is more for his own ego (natural, given that writing does need a certain amount of bull) but still... I wonder if glorifying art in this way does more harm than good.
Also, poverty is not inspiring. It's hard work and mentally draining. No surprise I do more writing now with a comfortable job and a roof over my head, than I did as a teenager, wondering if I might end up homeless after university ended.