Henry Miller Quotes

Boredom rests upon the nothingness that winds its way through existence; its giddiness, like that which comes from gazing down into an infinite abyss, is infinite.

There's a kind of emptiness at the center of life ... nothing to form your life on, or by.

Nothingness not being nothing, nothingness being emptiness.

There is no there there.

'Extract' was kind of a grown up 'Office Space' in the sense of talking about the ennui of being a successful person in America if you don't have some real passion in your life for something to care about.

My chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom came from the fact that I was living a life based on my incapacities, which were numerous.

Hell is more like boredom, or not having enough to do, and too much time to contemplate one's deficiencies.

Only now do I understand the war against boredom, the lost cause of empty hours, of empty days and nights.

The existential vacuum manifests itself mainly in a state of boredom.

Nothing is so intolerable to man as being fully at rest, without passion, without business, without entertainment, without care. It is then that he recognizes that he is empty, insufficient, dependent, ineffectual. From the depths of his soul now comes at once boredom, gloom, sorrow, chagrin, resentment and despair.

There's nothing at the center of what we do...No center. It doesn't exist. All of us-look at our lives: We have an acceptable level of affluence. We have entertainment. We have a relative freedom from fear. But there's nothing else.

The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war.

Emptiness and boredom: what a complete understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair and boredom.

Nothingness lies coiled in the heart of being - like a worm.

An absence of meaning opens a gap in time.

I am nothing, and not even that.

Sunday neurosis, that kind of depression which afflicts people who become aware of the lack of content in their lives when the rush of the busy week is over and the void within themselves becomes manifest.

I think the real reason is that life has no meaning. I mean, no obvious meaning. You wake up, you go to work, you do stuff. I think everybody's always looking for something a little unusual that can preoccupy them and help pass the time.

In the big picture, life has a gap in it. It just does. You don't go crazy trying to fill it.

We become aware of the void as we fill it.

Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee.

Rage is really only for the good days. The truth is there's little of that left. the truth is that the forms I see have been slowly emptied out. They no longer have any content. They are shapes only. A train, a wall, a world. Or a man. A thing dangling in senseless articulation in a howling void. No meaning to its life. Its words. Why would I seek the company of such a thing? Why?

I have a sort of empty feeling; nothing in the world seems of sufficient importance to be worth the doing.

There is nothing so insupportable to man as to be in entire repose, without passion, occupation, amusement, or application. Then it is that he feels his own nothingness, isolation, insignificance, dependent nature, powerless, emptiness. Immediately there issue from his soul ennui, sadness, chagrin, vexation, despair.

...even after you've just won the Super Bowl -- especially after you've just won the Super Bowl -- there's always next year. If Winning isn't everything; it's the only thing, then the only thing is nothing -- emptiness, the nightmare of life without ultimate meaning.