Quotes from Roman Payne

Our eyes will know the heavens if our lips stay for each other.

Une fille sans nattes est comme une ville sans ponts.

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.

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.

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.

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. And to their girls, they will give, while with their sons they'll share; where I will bear a song—a son! The wife of despair.

Was I deranged? Maybe. Yet, is it not derangement that guides us to seek out those we want to love in this world?

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.

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…

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.

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.

Let these men sing out their songs, they've been walking all day long, all their fortune's spent and gone... silver dollar in the subway station; quarters for the papers for the jobs.

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.

All that I desire in life are three... A wilderness: A beach on the sun-drenched sea, A puff of opium, And thee.

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?

A tired man lay down his head in a dusty room so dim, and for so long his wife did shake and yell to waken him. Meanwhile his thoughts, his dreams, did stir of sandy, red bullfights, of powder-blasts in the air and carnival delights. Yet still his wife was in despair in a dusty room so dim, for she knew death was a whore not far from tempting him.

To make your life a work of wonder go into the night and wander; penetrate the world asunder, to find your fate in someplace fonder.

Passionate attraction to someone of the opposite sex will make a hero or a fool of a novelist each time.

Heroic be the Wanderess, the world be her muse.

Being the Novelist-in-Residence at a riad hotel in the kasbah of an Arabic North African city is a lot like trying to write one's memoirs on shreds of napkins in a nuthouse.

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

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

If a writer writes something that he or she has never experienced, I think the reader can sense right away that it is garbage. The only thing that can replace experience, though, is imagination; however it takes experience to grow an imagination.

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!)