Top 100 Roman Payne Quotes
#1. She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city.
Roman Payne
#2. In life, more than in anything else, it isn't easy to end up alive.
Roman Payne
#3. The poet believed that 'Beauty' first entered the world not at its creation, nor with the first garden, the first sunrise, the birth of the first man and woman and their first sexual act. The poet believed that 'Beauty' entered the world the day the first child blushed.
Roman Payne
#4. SAUL: 'We made love outdoors, my favorite place to make love, assuming the weather be fair and balmy, and the earth beneath be clean. Our souls intertwined and dripping with sweat.
Roman Payne
#7. She wakes in a puddle of sunlight.
Her hands asleep beside her.
Her hair draped on the lawn
like a mantle of cloth.
Roman Payne
#8. Rich will be my life if I
can keep my memories full
and brimming, and record
them on clear-eyed
mornings while I set
joyously to work setting
pen to holy craft.
Roman Payne
#9. From flophouse bed
To poorhouse bread,
all outhouse sorrow:
I thee wed.
Roman Payne
#10. When I touched her body,
I believed she was God.
In the curves of her form
I found the birth of Man,
the creation of the world,
and the origin of all life.
Roman Payne
#11. Opium: that terrible truth serum. Dark secrets guarded for a lifetime can be divulged with carefree folly after a sip of the black smoke.
Roman Payne
#12. I will always know the glory of the beautiful and rare, as they will know security from labour and prayer. As they will hear the laughter of the children they gave life, I will know the torments of the song born under knife.
Roman Payne
#13. When she was a child, my love carried a road-map in her hand the way other girls carried handkerchiefs. She always knew the way. Her feet were little wings. And her beautiful head was a compass.
Roman Payne
#14. Who's to say what a 'literary life' is? As long as you are writing often, and writing well, you don't need to be hanging-out in libraries all the time.
Nightclubs are great literary research centers. So is Ibiza!
Roman Payne
#15. The novelist is condemned to wander all his life. Homeless and blind like Oedipus he wanders until death. And so let us protect the novelist and adore him, with pity, honor, and love.
Roman Payne
#16. All that I ask out of life is that it be constant and unending euphoria. And so, I make love and I write.
Roman Payne
#17. As for men, they must learn bravery and live for Pleasure and for Beauty. More important than those two things should stand only one thing for him ... Honor. A man's honor should be more sacred to him than his life - especially in our age, a time when very few men know what honor is.
Roman Payne
#18. The tragedy of Dionysus: Wear a black robe at night, and white you'll wear by morning; but wear a purple robe to the midnight feast, and when you wake you'll dress in black to mourn your soul deceased.
Roman Payne
#19. Fortune's fool! How we humans lie upon beauty like lizards upon a sun-baked rock.
Roman Payne
#20. She called herself an angel, and wandered the world from girlhood till death. She lived every kind of life and dreamt every kind of dream. She was wild in her wandering, a drop of free water. She believed only in her life and in her dreams. She called herself an angel, and her god was Beauty.
Roman Payne
#21. Whilst the wolflets bayed,
A grave was made,
And then with the strokes of a silver spade,
It was filled to make a mound.
And for two cold days and three long nights,
The father tended that holy plot;
And stayed by where his wife was laid, In the grave within the ground.
Roman Payne
#22. All I want in this life are three...
a moonlit beach on the starlit sea,
a breath of opium,
and thee.
Roman Payne
#23. Those things: Mystery, Fate, and Enchantment ... they are things that young people offer us as soon as we get close to them. And if we're not careful, we can be seduced by, and drawn back into, the youthful world the young preside over.
Roman Payne
#24. Our eyes will know the heavens if our lips stay for each other.
Roman Payne
#25. The youthful body untouched decays the fastest, for no living hands record its splendor; and here youth and time are wasted.
Roman Payne
#26. It's just that I don't believe in living a life in decline. Either one grows, one blooms, or one diminishes. I wasn't able to imagine any way after witnessing the white nights to continue to live while growing. And since I refuse to live and diminish, I wanted to die.
Roman Payne
#27. I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side.
Roman Payne
#28. A 'dreamer' is one possesses the gift of dreaming by day. Sure, many dream at night, but don't also small babies and animals dream at night? To dream by day and dream aloud: Is this not the reward for all the troubles we humans must face?
Roman Payne
#29. Wanderess, Wanderess,
weave us a story of seduction and ruse.
Heroic be the Wanderess,
the world be her muse.
Roman Payne
#31. I cursed myself. For once, heaven had sent me "Beauty" in its most perfected form and I abandoned it. She might not have been a girl after all but an angel: a force to guide me on this hazardous path of life I hurry down ... How can life be hazardous if it can only end in death?
Roman Payne
#32. There are hours for rest, and hours for wakefulness; nights for sobriety and nights for drunkenness - (if only so that possession of the former allows us to discern the latter when we have it; for sad as it is, no human body can be happily drunk all the time).
Roman Payne
#33. Although I love elegant parties, dancing and dining and spending the night with a sweet woman in my arms, my life belongs to literature.
Roman Payne
#34. The 'Muse' is not an artistic mystery, but a mathematical equation. The gift are those ideas you think of as you drift to sleep. The giver is that one you think of when you first awake.
Roman Payne
#35. After 15 years living in Paris, I felt myself growing old and stagnant - similar to stagnant water sitting in a bowl; cats have a survival instinct not to drink this water. They can sense when it's old and may be carrying air-borne germs. After 15 years in Paris, I no longer felt drinkable.
Roman Payne
#36. I've decided the act that cannot wait / is the important will to create / But, ah, if my belly is ignored / the pantry door I shall implore / But I've been known to reach the bed / ideas still famished in my head.
Roman Payne
#37. I regained my soul through literature after those times I'd lost it to wild-eyed gypsy girls on the European streets.
Roman Payne
#38. Favoring 'resolution' the way we do, it is hard for us men to write great love stories. Why?, because we want to tell too much. We aren't satisfied unless at the end of the story the characters are lying there, panting.
Roman Payne
#39. Spanish rain,
A maiden's dress,
Apothecary pills
And ancient thrills;
Melancholy kills
A girl's caress.
Roman Payne
#40. A girl without braids is like a mountain without waterfalls.
Roman Payne
#41. From all that I saw, and everywhere I wandered, I learned that time cannot be spent. It can only be squandered.
Roman Payne
#42. No man sings as beautifully as when his song is accompanied by a woman's voice.
Roman Payne
#43. You must give everything to make your life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in your imagination.
Roman Payne
#44. If you love my work, you are a good critic. If you do not love my work, you are a 'not good' critic.
Roman Payne
#45. I saw this moment as attached by threads to eternity and woven between all the other braided moments of my past and my future.
Roman Payne
#46. The artist's greatest creation began
the night he washed his memory of his failures
rubbed opium on his lips
drank the wine that women offered him
and lay down and wept.
Roman Payne
#47. In general I strive for greatness and rational achievement, but I admit to you I've a terrible fondness for women, a tendency towards drunkenness, and a weakness for the fumes of the poppy - opium and other miserable beauties.
Roman Payne
#48. I was angry at myself for my inclination to vice. I longed for the day when a state of frenzy would lead my mind to sober pasture, just as it had for Saint Augustine. I longed for the day when the love of one woman would be sacred enough to forget all the rest.
Roman Payne
#49. Visions from the gods are gifts alone for those who wander.
Roman Payne
#50. A girl without braids is like a city without bridges.
Roman Payne
#51. I've seen knives pierce the chest,
Children dying in the road
Crawling things hooked and baited,
Rapists bound and then castrated,
Villains singed in public square.
Yet none these sights did make me cringe
Like when my Love cut all her hair.
Roman Payne
#52. She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water. She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs. 'Time' for her isn't something to fight against. Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water.
Roman Payne
#53. I've only been to jail a few times, but in several different countries, at that. No, I've only been to jail a few times. But I still claim the ability to write a "serious" novel.
Roman Payne
#54. Wine gives one 'ideas,' whereas champagne gives one 'strategies.
Roman Payne
#55. With the need for the self in the time of another / I left my seaport grim and dear / knowing good work could be made / in the state governed by both Hope and Despair.
Roman Payne
#56. Women writers make for rewarding (and efficient) lovers. They are clever liars to fathers and husbands; yet they never hold their tongues too long, nor keep ardent typing fingers still.
Roman Payne
#57. A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite of passion.
Roman Payne
#58. Looking back on my life, I sigh. The caprice of youth goes with the wind, I've no regrets.
Roman Payne
#59. [As a very young man, I thought] of Europe as a place that could not exist except in the imagination, in glorious dreams, and through the careful lies of the silver screen.
Roman Payne
#60. The moment her hymen was plucked from her body in the wilderness,
Her soul was taken from sanity.
Roman Payne
#61. May a man live well-enough and long-enough, to leave many joyful widows behind him.
Roman Payne
#62. All forms of madness, bizarre habits, awkwardness in society, general clumsiness, are justified in the person who creates good art.
Roman Payne
#63. I was an adventurer, but she was not an adventuress. She was a 'wanderess.' Thus, she didn't care about money, only experiences - whether they came from wealth or from poverty, it was all the same to her.
Roman Payne
#64. My girl was mad and I loved her. Upon a night, she read my poetry; and kissing me madly she cried, 'You are a genius, my love!' To which I replied, 'My girl,' whispering, 'Every doctor in this land with a prescription pad is more of a genius than I.
Roman Payne
#65. I met Anne in the autumn ... Autumn, that wild season when rural men rack orchard trees with sticks and weep with the desire to kiss faraway Demeter's supple breasts - to set lips to her travel-swollen eyes. They seek goddesses, but I desired only Anne.
Roman Payne
#66. He was no god, he was just an artist; and when an artist is a man, he needs a woman to create like a god.
Roman Payne
#67. Mine was the twilight and the morning. Mine was a world of rooftops and love songs.
Roman Payne
#69. We look up to see if it is day or night. If stars burn cool and moon does shine, we take to smoke divine and wine.
If breath of sun does belch its heat,
we boil coffee and prepare to eat.
Roman Payne
#70. She was a free bird: queen of the world and laughing.
Roman Payne
#71. Yes, in a woman, looks are the most important thing... But it's not how she looks 'to' us, so much as 'how she looks at' us.
Roman Payne
#72. We made love outdoors
Without a roof, I like most,
Without stove, to make love, assuming the weather be fair and balmy, and the earth beneath be clean. Our souls intertwined and gushing of dew.
Roman Payne
#73. Just as a painter paints,
and a ponderer ponders,
a writer writes,
and a wanderer wanders.
Roman Payne
#74. Be there a picnic for the devil,
an orgy for the satyr,
and a wedding for the bride.
Roman Payne
#75. With her enchanting songs, her rare beauty, and clever tricks, this wild 'wanderess' ensnared my soul like a gypsy-thief, and led me foolish and blind to where you find me now. The first time I saw her, fires were alight. It was a spicy night in Barcelona. The air was fragrant and free.
Roman Payne
#76. The lot of the bride
to be wed before bed
desired until rotten.
The lot of the author
to be read before bed
admired then forgotten.
Roman Payne
#77. Why do we mortals wonder if it is through 'human chaos' or through 'divine perfection' when the world guides us to some magical event? In either case, is not the result the same? Is the result not 'divine perfection?
Roman Payne
#78. I remember her body so miraculously
Fumbling with me so delicately
Fighting with me so passionately
Exhausting us both so mercilessly
Before sleeping beside me so languidly.
Roman Payne
#79. The birthing wolf,
Her heart fed with tenderness,
Gave forth from ripe brown nipples,
Food to feed the universe.
Roman Payne
#80. I'm not ashamed of heroic ambitions. If man and woman can only dance upon this earth for a few countable turns of the sun ... let each of us be an Artemis, Odysseus, or Zeus ... Aphrodite to the extent of the will of each one.
Roman Payne
#81. We were hooked when we woke.
We had arms for each other.
But I yearned to resume
My dreams of another.
Roman Payne
#82. I took her to bed with silk and song
'Lay still, my love, I won't be long,
I must prepare my body for passion.'
'O, your body you give, but all else you ration ...
Roman Payne
#83. I like the posture, but not the yoga.
I like the inebriated morning, but not the opium. I like the flower but not the garden, the moment but not the dream. Quiet, my love. Be still. I am sleeping.
Roman Payne
#84. I care not that this moment's lot was thin and sparsely dealt; all pleasures sweet can be forgot the instant they are felt.
Roman Payne
#85. Who is better off? The one who writes to revel in the voluptuousness of the life that surrounds them? Or the one who writes to escape the tediousness of that which awaits them outside? Whose flame will last longer?
Roman Payne
#86. My Love wakes in a puddle of sunlight.
Her hands asleep beside her.
Her hair draped on the lawn
like a mantle of cloth.
I give her my troth, for our love is whole
I sing her beauty in my soul
Roman Payne
#87. Was I deranged? Maybe. Yet, is it not derangement that guides us to seek out those we want to love in this world?
Roman Payne
#88. All that I desire in life are three ...
A wilderness: A beach on the sun-drenched sea,
A puff of opium,
And thee.
Roman Payne
#89. She was so delicate that, while we sat beneath the linden branches, a leaf would fall and drift down and touch her skin, and it would leave a bruise. So as we sat in the afternoon hour, beneath that fragrant linden bower, I had to chase all of the leafs that fell away.
Roman Payne
#90. Intoxication, like sexual euphoria, is the privilege of the human animal.
Roman Payne
#91. I was glad to be made aware
that "Veimke" (jeune fille au pair),
is subject to natural law,
and can be made fat,
by such things as poor diet,
and alcohol.
Roman Payne
#92. I fear it is my lot, to bide my days in hunchbacked thought, to find what I forgot.
Roman Payne
#93. Who worries for dying? If I close my eyes tonight, I will either dream, or not, or my eyes will open and I will be here again. And if none of those happen, and I do not wake? Who worries for dying?
Roman Payne
#94. There was no world, no land, no god or heaven or earth outside of their two bodies naked and trembling in the act of love.
Roman Payne
#95. Womankind always seems to be able to see a dozen steps into the future, far ahead of what men are able to see. And they have strength where we do not.
Roman Payne
#96. Alexander the Great slept with
'The Iliad' beneath his pillow.
Though I've never led an army,
I am a wanderer. I cradle
'The Odyssey' nights while the
moon is waning, as if it were
the sweet body of a woman.
Roman Payne
#97. I didn't know then that young girls were a sort of poison, infectious to the man of age; and that men of age justly take woman of age to cure themselves of the diseases of youth.
Roman Payne
#98. The Love of Europa: She called herself Europa. She was wild in her wandering, a drop of free water. She believed only in her life and in her dreams. She called herself Europa, and her god was Beauty.
Roman Payne
#99. I sat up in the strange bed fearing it had been a dream, afraid I would never see her again. Not because I wanted anything from her, only her presence. The disappearance of the presence of beauty is the most despairing of events on this time-wheel of ours that rolls onward towards death.
Roman Payne
#100. Everything was brighter and more colorful in those years, as if my childhood was ending in an explosion of unreal passion that made my life feel sacred and holy.
Roman Payne
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