Henry Miller Quotes on America (7 Quotes)

The wallpaper with which the men of science have covered the world of reality is falling to tatters. The grand whorehouse which they have made of life requires no decoration; it is essential that only the drains function adequately. Beauty, that feline beauty that has us by the balls in America, is finished.

You can travel fifty thousand miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread.

Topographically the country is magnificent -- and terrifying. Why terrifying Because nowhere else in the world is the divorce between man and nature so complete. Nowhere have I encountered such a dull, monotonous fabric of life as here in America. Here boredom reaches its peak.

It is the American vice, the democratic disease which expresses its tyranny by reducing everything unique to the level of the herd.

The American white man (not to speak of the Indian, the Negro, the Mexican) hasn't a ghost of a chance. If he has any talent he's doomed to have it crushed one way or another. The American way is to seduce a man by bribery and make a prostitute of him. Or else to ignore him, starve him into submission and make a hack of him.

It isn't the oceans which cut us off from the world - it's the American way of looking at things.

Perhaps I am still very much of an American. That is to say, nanve, optimistic, gullible. In the eyes of a European, what am I but an American to the core, an American who exposes his Americanism like a sore. Like it or not, I am a product of this land of plenty, a believer in superabundance, a believer in miracles.