Roman Payne Quotes

From all that I saw, and everywhere I wandered, I learned that time cannot be spent. It can only be squandered. ~ Roman Payne

She is my morning, she is my evening; we have a love that blooms over and again, more beautifully each time than the last. You will see that we are not lovers like others, for whom love is both a punishment and a gift ... Our love has never punished, only rewarded. Such love therein lies the eudaimonic life. ~ Roman Payne

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

You are like a god, like an immortal one,' she whispered to me one night in our bed, her naked body pressed to mine, our sweat golden and glistening in the candlelight. 'Oh, my love,' I whispered back to her, 'I am more mortal than all. It seems that a part of me dies every night that I lie with you. ~ Roman Payne

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

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

Somewhere I'd heard, or invented perhaps, that the only pleasures found during a waning moon are misfortunes in disguise. Superstition aside, I avoid pleasure during the waning or absent moon out of respect for the bounty this world offers me. I profit from great harvests in life and believe in the importance of seasons. ~ Roman Payne

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

A girl without braids is like a mountain without waterfalls. ~ Roman Payne

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

A girl without braids is like a city without bridges. ~ Roman Payne

In my errant life I roamed
to learn the secrets of women and men,
of gods and dreams.
I lived in wealth and poverty,
in fame and calamity.
I saw every country of our world,
I lived a thousand lives.
Many lives I spent, other lives I squandered,
for in my life I never traveled, all I did was wander. ~ Roman Payne

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

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

Wine gives one 'ideas,' whereas champagne gives one 'strategies. ~ Roman Payne

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

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

The youthful body untouched decays the fastest, for no living hands record its splendor; and here youth and time are wasted. ~ Roman Payne

It's not that we have to leave this life one day, it's how many things we have to leave all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, wine, summertime,
drunkenness, and the physics of falling leaves, clothing, myrrh, perfumed hair, flirting friends, two strangers' glance; the reflection of the moon, with words like, 'Soon' ... 'do you
want me?' ... '...to lie enlaced' ... 'and sleep entwined' thinking ahead, with thoughts behind...?' Ô, Why!
Why can't we leave this life slowly? ~ Roman Payne

A glorious death would be in my
final breath to take before I die, to hear
one final time on my belovèd's mouth
the sound of her eternal sigh. ~ Roman Payne

All I want in this life are three...
a moonlit beach on the starlit sea,
a breath of opium,
and thee. ~ Roman Payne

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looking back on my life, I sigh. The caprice of youth goes with the wind, I've no regrets. ~ Roman Payne

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

Visions from the gods are gifts alone for those who wander. ~ Roman Payne

You must give everything to make your life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in your imagination. ~ Roman Payne

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

All forms of madness, bizarre habits, awkwardness in society, general clumsiness, are justified in the person who creates good art. ~ Roman Payne

When I met a truly beautiful girl, I would tell her that if she spent the night with me, I would write a novel or a story about her. This usually worked; and if her name was to be in the title of the story, it almost always worked. Then, later, when we'd passed a night of delicious love-making together, after she'd gone and I'd felt that feeling of happiness mixed with sorrow, I sometimes would write a book or story about her. Sometimes her character, her way about herself, her love-making, it sometimes marked me so heavily that I couldn't go on in life and be happy unless I wrote a book or a story about that woman, the happy and sad memory of that woman. That was the only way to keep her, and to say goodbye to her without her ever leaving. ~ Roman Payne

The smell of a woman is her most important quality. I'd loved women who were old and who were young; those with extra kilos and large rumps, and others so thin there was barely even skin to pinch, and every time I held them, I worried I would snap them in two. But for all of these, where they had merited my love was in their delicious smell. Scent is such a powerful tool of attraction, that if a woman has this tool perfectly tuned, she needs no other. I will forgive her a large nose, a cleft lip, even crossed-eyes; and I'll bathe in the jouissance of her intoxicating odour. ~ Roman Payne

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

Fortune's fool! How we humans lie upon beauty like lizards upon a sun-baked rock. ~ Roman Payne

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

No man sings as beautifully as when his song is accompanied by a woman's voice. ~ Roman Payne

It is growing cold. Winter is putting footsteps in the meadow. What whiteness boasts that sun that comes into this wood! One would say milk-colored maidens are dancing on the petals of orchids. How coldly burns our sun! One would say its rays of light are shards of snow, one imagines the sun lives upon a snow crested peak on this day. One would say she is a woman who wears a gown of winter frost that blinds the eyes. Helplessness has weakened me. Wandering has wearied my legs. ~ Roman Payne

I was surrounded by friends, my work was immense, and pleasures were abundant. Life, now, was unfolding before me, constantly and visibly, like the flowers of summer that drop fanlike petals on eternal soil. Overall, I was happiest to be alone; for it was then I was most aware of what I possessed. Free to look out over the rooftops of the city. Happy to be alone in the company of friends, the company of lovers and strangers. Everything, I decided, in this life, was pure pleasure. ~ Roman Payne

Rest in Peace?' Why that phrase? That's the most ridiculous phrase I've ever heard! You die, and they say 'Rest in Peace!' …Why would one need to 'rest' when they're dead?! I spent thousands of years of world history resting. While Agamemnon was leading his ships to Troy, I was resting. While Ovid was seducing women at the chariot races, I was resting. While Jeanne d'Arc was hallucinating, I was resting. I wait until airplanes are scuttling across the sky to burst out onto the scene, and I'm only going to be here for a short while, so when I die, I certainly won't need to rest again! Not while more adventures of the same kind are going on. ~ Roman Payne

I believe you can consider yourself a successful prose writer when the number of words you put on a page each day is equal to, or greater than, the number of milligrams of mind-altering chemicals you ingest in that day. (Note: this rule does not apply to poets who write in the short-form. You, my boys and girls, are free as birds!) ~ Roman Payne

We rode the basement trains all night, speeding through the subterrains. I held her chin in the cup of my hand and her eyes held tight to mine, imploring me to reveal to her the mystery of that which awaits us on the pavement above, come the day we ascend from this labyrinth of trains ... 'We will ride these beautiful basement trains forever,' said I, 'nothing awaits us; and as your beauty folds, so do my dreams. Come, my love, let us wander these tunnels of the endless city. This holy, endless city! ~ Roman Payne

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

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

In life, more than in anything else, it isn't easy to end up alive. ~ Roman Payne

The comedy in our lives was those first few weeks we lived together in Paris: Our bodies desired one another, our souls opened for one another. We experienced all of the happiness and anguish of first love. Those first few weeks in Paris, we barely touched lips; yet the few times we did, it had the force of a collision of stars. ~ Roman Payne

To wander is to be alive. ~ Roman Payne

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

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

Wanderess, Wanderess,
weave us a story of seduction and ruse.
Heroic be the Wanderess,
the world be her muse. ~ Roman Payne

When lovers are in love, they don't diminish. When wanderers wander, they do not diminish. The world lays itself out beautiful before them; a rich tapestry to explore; with love in abundance. But for this, a wanderer must be favored by Fortune. Fortune is not "riches," it is "Poetic Beauty" that comes by surprise! - like a ship coming in from Dover ... ~ Roman Payne

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

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

To wish a healthy man to die is the wish from a mind of sickness. To wish an ailing man to die is the wish of the ambitious. ~ Roman Payne

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

I just wish moments weren't so fleeting!' Isaac called to the man on the roof, 'They pass so quickly!'
'Fleeting?!' responded the tilling man, 'Moments? They pass quickly?! ... Why, once a man is finished growing, he still has twenty years of youth. After that, he has twenty years of middle age. Then, unless misfortune strikes, nature gives him twenty thoughtful years of old age. Why do you call that quickly?' And with that, the tilling man wiped his sweaty brow and continued tilling; and the dejected Isaac continued wandering.
'Stupid fool!' Isaac muttered quietly to himself as soon as he was far enough away not to be heard. ~ Roman Payne

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

It's not that we have to quit
this life one day, but it's how
many things we have to quit
all at once: music, laughter,
the physics of falling leaves,
automobiles, holding hands,
the scent of rain, the concept
of subway trains ... if only one
could leave this life slowly! ~ Roman Payne

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

Be there a picnic for the devil,
an orgy for the satyr,
and a wedding for the bride. ~ Roman Payne

After joyfully working each morning, I would leave off around midday to challenge myself to a footrace. Speeding along the sunny paths of the Jardin du Luxembourg, ideas would breed like aphids in my head - for creative invention is easy and sublime when air cycles quickly through the lungs and the body is busy at noble tasks. ~ Roman Payne

I regained my soul through literature after those times I'd lost it to wild-eyed gypsy girls on the European streets. ~ Roman Payne

Analogies are like lies. ~ Roman Payne

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

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

This was how it was with travel: one city gives you gifts, another robs you. One gives you the heart's affections, the other destroys your soul. Cities and countries are as alive, as feeling, as fickle and uncertain as people. Their degrees of love and devotion are as varying as with any human relation. Just as one is good, another is bad. ~ Roman Payne

I fear it is my lot, to bide my days in hunchbacked thought, to find what I forgot. ~ Roman Payne

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

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

[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

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

We all die in the middle of something. ~ Roman Payne

Cities were always like people, showing their varying personalities to the traveler. Depending on the city and on the traveler, there might begin a mutual love, or dislike, friendship, or enmity. Where one city will rise a certain individual to glory, it will destroy another who is not suited to its personality. Only through travel can we know where we belong or not, where we are loved and where we are rejected. ~ Roman Payne

The season was waning fast
Our nights were growing cold at last
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.'
'It is because of these dreams of a sylvan scene:
A bleeding nymph to leave me serene ...
I have dreams of a trembling wench.'
'You have dreams,' she said, 'that cannot be quenched.'
'Our passion,' said I, 'should never be feared;
As our longing for love can never be cured.
Our want is our way and our way is our will,
We have the love, my love, that no one can kill.'
'If night is your love, then in dreams you'll fulfill ...
This love, our love, that no one can kill.'
Yet want is my way, and my way is my will,
Thus I killed my love with a sleeping pill. ~ Roman Payne

I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side. ~ Roman Payne

Fueled by my inspiration, I ran across the room to steal the cup of coffee the bookshelf had taken prisoner. Lapping the black watery brew like a hyena, I tossed the empty cup aside. I then returned to the chair to continue my divine act of creation. Hot blood swished in my head as my mighty pen stole across the page. ~ Roman Payne

I once had a love who folded secrets between her thighs like napkins
and concealed memories in the valley of her breasts.
There was no match for the freckles on her chest,
and no one could mistake them for a field of honeysuckles.
Upon her lips, a thousand lies were spread in sweet gloss.
Her kiss was like a storybook from ancient history.
She was at home with the body of a man inside her, beside her.
At night, when she lay in bed crying,
no one could mistake the tears she wept for a summer shower
She is gone, my love. She was a wanderess, a wildflower. ~ Roman Payne

May a man live well-enough and long-enough, to leave many joyful widows behind him. ~ Roman Payne

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

So the nymphs they spoke,
we kissed and laid.
By noontime's hour
our love was made.
Like braided chains of crocus stems,
we lay entwined, I laid with them.
Our breath, one glassy, tideless sea,
our bodies draping wearily,
we slept, I slept so lucidly,
with hopes to stay this memory. ~ Roman Payne

88. People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I've been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it's the best place to pick ideas. Just like Italy, Spain.. or Iran are the best places to pick saffron. If you want to pick opium poppies you go to Burma or South-East Asia. And if you want to pick novel ideas, you go to Paris. ~ Roman Payne

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

From flophouse bed
To poorhouse bread,
all outhouse sorrow:
I thee wed. ~ Roman Payne

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

In the boundaryless forests,
there're dancers of nude.
Yet in the confines of pasture,
there's promise of food.
On which is your side?
Ô, but tarry and bide,
ere you decide,
in both do confide. ~ Roman Payne

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ô, the wine of a woman
from heaven is sent,
more perfect than all
that a man can invent. ~ Roman Payne

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

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

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

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

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

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