Henry Miller

“Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.”

“Analysis brings no curative powers in its train; it merely makes us conscious of the existence of an evil, which, oddly enough, is consciousness.”

“Music is a beautiful opiate, if you don't take it too seriously.”

“Plots and character don't make life. Life is here and now, anytime you say the word, anytime you let her rip.”

“I have never been able to look upon America as young and vital but rather as prematurely old, as a fruit which rotted before it had a chance to ripen.”

“The prisoner is not the one who has commited a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.”

“The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.”

“The world dies over and over again, but the skeleton always gets up and walks.”

“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.”

“The new always carries with it the sense of violation, of sacrilege. What is dead is sacred; what is new, that is different, is evil, dangerous, or subversive.”

“If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms.”