"Everything nourishes me, stimulates me"

Here are some lines I've underlined in the last couple pages I've read in Henry Miller's The Books In My Life. I'm taking lot longer than usual to finish this book, but the great thing about this book is that it (or Henry) does not demand you "finish" it. It simply wants to be there for you, and for you to pick it up when you can really absorb and be with it. And I, certainly love and appreciate it so much more for it.


"All these critical and interpretive studies of authors so vitally important (to us) are made in our own interest, I believe. Our labors only serve to make us better understand ourselves. Our subjects seldom need our defense or our brilliant interpretations. Usually they are dead by the time we get to them. As for the public, I am more and more convinced that "they" too need less and less assistance or instruction; it is more important, I do believe, for them to struggle on their own.

As for Joyce, certainly I am indebted to him. Certainly I was influenced by him. But my affinity is more with Lawrence, obviously. My antecedents are the romantic, demonic, confessional, subjective types of writers."


"We do not ask of one who opens our eyes by what authority he acts; we do not demand his credentials. Nor should we be forever grateful and reverent towards our benefactors, since each of us has the power in turn to awaken others and does in fact do so, often unwittingly. The wise man, the holy man, the true scholar, learns as much from the criminal, the beggar, the whore, as he does from the saint, the teacher, or the Good Book."