Henry Miller Order Quotations

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not understood.

Chaos is the score upon which reality is written.

Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.

Confusion is a word we have invented for an order which is not yet understood

The world is not to be put in order, the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.

Giving and receiving are at bottom one thing, dependent on whether one lives open or closed. Living openly one becomes a medium, a transmitter; living thus, as a river, one experiences life to the full, flows along with the current of life, and dies in order to live again as an ocean.

How different the new order would be if we could consult the veteran instead of the politician.

I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a chance to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to forget.

I am of the order whose purpose is not to teach the world a lesson but to explain that school is over.

The word which gives the key to the national vice is waste. And people who are wasteful are not wise, neither can they remain young and vigorous. In order to transmute energy to higher and more subtle levels one must first conserve it.