Quotes from Roman Payne

Ô, Wanderess, Wanderess When did you feel your most euphoric kiss? Was I the source of your greatest bliss?

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

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.

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.

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.

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

We were hooked when we woke. We had arms for each other. But I yearned to resume My dreams of another.

To wander is to be alive.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I know a girl from whose body sunbeams rose to the clouds as if they'd fallen from the sun. Her laugh was like a bangle of bells. "Your hair is wet," I told her one day, "Did you take a bath?" "It is dew!" she laughed, "I've been lying in the grass. All morning long, I lay here waiting for the dawn.

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.

In my errant life I roamed To learn the secrets of women and men, Of gods and dreams. I've known all the countries of our world, I've lived a thousand lives: Many lives I lived in love, Other lives I squandered. For in my life I never traveled, All I did was wander.

Alexander the Great slept with 'The Iliad' beneath his pillow. During the waning moon, I cradle Homer's 'Odyssey' as if it were the sweet body of a woman.

She was a free bird: queen of the world and laughing.

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

Wandering is the activity of the child, the passion of the genius; it is the discovery of the self, the discovery of the outside world, and the learning of how the self is both "at one with" and "separate from" the outside world. These discoveries are as fundamental to the soul as "learning to survive" is fundamental to the body. These discoveries are essential to realizing what it means to be human. To wander is to be alive.

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

Our lips were for each other and our eyes were full of dreams. We knew nothing of travel and we knew nothing of loss. Ours was a world of eternal spring, until the summer came.

Just as a painter paints, and a ponderer ponders, a writer writes, and a wanderer wanders.

I was forced to wander, having no one, forced by my nature to keep wandering because wandering was the only thing that I believed in, and the only thing that believed in me.

She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city.