Tropic of Cancer (1970)

Rip Torn: Henry Miller

Photos 

Quotes 

• Henry Miller : [narrating]  I am fucking you Tania, so that you'll stay fucked. And if you're afraid of being fucked publicly, I'll fuck you privately. I'll tear off a few hairs from your cunt and paste them on Boris's chin. I will bite into your clitoris and spit out two franc pieces.

• [first lines] 

  Henry Miller : This, then, this is not a movie. This is a libel, slander, defamation of character, a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, man, destiny, time, love, beauty, what you will. I'm going to sing for you. A little off-key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak. I will dance over your dirty corpse.

• Henry Miller : Could you loan me five francs to take a taxi to St. Lazare? Now, you know Mona. If I'm not there to meet the boat train, she's liable to turn right around and go back.

• Henry Miller : If the lady's any good at all, it's never far from her mind. All you have to do is let *her* know that you know what she's thinking about.

• M. Le Censeur : He go, uh... over the wall.

  Henry Miller : Eh, couldn't he've just gone through the door?

  M. Le Censeur : The door is locked by key. Each night. At ten. To avoid the infiltration of women.

• Henry Miller : [narrating]  It began to have an independent existence, for me too. There was Germaine... and there was that rosebush of hers. I liked them separately and I liked them together.

• Carl : [Reading the letter he wrote]  You send me golden apples, Irene dear. And gifts of shaggy chestnuts too.

  Henry Miller : She hasn't given you anything has she?

  Carl : No. But I like the word, shaggy.

• [Last lines] 

  Henry Miller : [narrating]  My thoughts drift out toward the sea, toward the other side, where taking a last look back, I had seen the skyscrapers fading out in a flurry of snowflakes. I see them looming up again, in the same ghostly way as when I left, see the lights creeping through their ribs, and see the whole city spread out from Harlem to the Battery, the streets chocked with ants, the theatres empty. I wonder, in a vague way, whatever happened to my wife. After everything quietly sifted through my head, a great peace came over me. Here, where the river gently winds through the girdle of the hills lies a soil so saturated with the past that however far back the mind roams, one can never detach it from its human background. Christ. Before my eyes, there shimmers such a golden peace that only a neurotic could dream of turning his head away. So quietly flows the Seine, that one hardly notices its presence. It is always there, quiet and unobtrusive, like a great artery running through the human body. In the wonderful peace that falls over me, it seems as if I've climbed to the top of a high mountain. For a little while, I will be able to look around me to take in the meaning of the landscape. Human beings make a strange fauna and flora. From a distance, they appear negligible; close up, they're apt to appear ugly and malicious. More than anything, they need to be surrounded with *sufficient* space. Space even more than time. The sun is setting. I feel this river flowing through me. It's past. It's ancient soil. The changing climate. The hills gently girdle it about. Its course is fixed.

• Henry Miller : The whale's penis is two meters long, and actually contains bone!