Henry Miller Quotes
I had to learn to think, feel, and see in a totally new fashion, in an uneducated way, in my own way, which is the hardest thing in the world. I had to throw myself into the current, knowing that I would probably sink. The great majority of artists are throwing themselves in with life preservers around their necks, and more often than not it is the life preserver, which sinks them. Nobody can drown in the ocean of reality who voluntarily gives herself up to the experience. Whatever there be of progress in life comes not through adaptation but through daring, through obeying the blind urge.
Miller, Henry. The Wisdom of the Heart. New Directions, 1941, p. 25.
Henry Valentine Miller was an American writer and artist. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism. His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Black Spring, Tropic of Capricorn and The Rosy Crucifixion trilogy, which are based on his experiences in New York and Paris (all of which were banned in the United States until 1961). He also wrote travel memoirs and literary criticism, and painted watercolors.
