How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
We must get in step, lock step, toward the prison of death. There is no escape. (1.3)
Conforming with society, working like a dog, and never being creative—that's death to Miller. And once you get in that cycle, you're doomed.
Quote #2
it is the world dying, shedding the skin of time (1.8)
Sure, people are dying off because they have given themselves over to the machine. But guess what? The world is dying, too. Don't worry though—according to the always philosophical Henry Miller, "shedding the skin of time" is a good thing, because only then can there be a rebirth.
Quote #3
I am crying for more and more disasters, for bigger calamities, for grander failures. I want the whole world to be out of whack, I want everyone to scratch himself to death (1.41).
Destruction = good. That's what Henry believes, at least. When there's destruction, people will finally see what really matters and face the horror they have created through mind-numbing routines. (Is anyone else feeling really sci-fi-y right now?)
Quote #4
The town was a shambles; corpses, mangled by butchers and stripped by plunderers, lay thick in the streets; wolves sneaked from the suburbs to eat them; the black death and other plagues crept in to keep them company. (3.11)
Always the littérateur, Henry is quoting here from a book he read (The Stones of Paris in History and Letters, 1899). But, honestly, it may as well be any place he has visited or lived. We can't help but see a little literary inspiration here.
Quote #5
Looking into the Seine I see mud and desolation, street lamps drowning, men and women choking to death, the bridges covered with houses, slaughterhouses of love. (5.16)
Okay, now compare this this description to the one from The Stones of Paris in 1899. Things haven't changed much, right? Or maybe he and the other author just share a dark vision.
Quote #6
In the middle of the street is a wheel and in the hub of the wheel is a gallows fixed. People already dead are trying frantically to mount the gallows, but the wheel is turning too fast. (5.16)
Another hallucination brought to you care of Henry Miller. Our guy sees dead people everywhere, and not The Sixth Sense style. It's because he thinks that people who are living uncreative lives are dead anyway. Not to be judgey or anything.
Quote #7
But I can't sleep. It's like going to sleep in a morgue. The mattress is saturated with embalming fluid. It's a morgue for lice, bedbugs, cockroaches, tapeworms. (6.10)
You know it has to be bad when even Henry can't handle it.
Quote #8
It's like I'm two people, and one of them is watching me all the time. I get so god-damned mad at myself that I could kill myself [...] and in a way, that's what I do every time I have an orgasm. For one second like I obliterate myself. (8.90)
That Van Norden is one dark character, huh? But what he says here clearly shows the equation between sex and death that Miller constantly alludes to.