Roman Payne Quotes & Sayings

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

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

Be there a picnic for the devil,
an orgy for the satyr,
and a wedding for the bride. — 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

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

To wander is to be alive. — 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

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

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

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

The green-eyed angel came in less than a half hour and fell docile as a lamb into my arms. We kissed and caressed, I met no resistance when I unlaced the strings to free her dress and fill myself in the moist and hot bed nature made between her thighs. We made love outdoors - without a roof, I like most, without stove, my favorite place, assuming the weather be fair and balmy, and the earth beneath be clean. Our souls intertwined and dripping with dew, and our love for each other was seen. Our love for the world was new. — Roman Payne

Women are extraordinary creatures! — Roman Payne

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

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

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

We all die in the middle of something. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The moment her hymen was plucked from her body in the wilderness,
Her soul was taken from sanity. — 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

Do we take less pride in the possession of our home because its walls were built by some unknown carpenter, its tapestries woven by some unknown weaver on a far Oriental shore, in some antique time? No. We show our home to our friends with the pride as if it were our home, which it is. Why then should we take less pride when reading a book written by some long-dead author? Is it not our book just as much, or even more so, than theirs? So the landowner says, 'Look at my beautiful home! Isn't it fine?' And not, 'Look at the home so-and-so has built.' Thus we shouldn't cry, 'Look what so-and-so has written. What a genius so-and-so is!' But rather, 'Look at what I have read! Am I not a genius? Have I not invented these pages? The walls of this universe, did I not build? The souls of these characters, did I not weave? — 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

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

When I was younger, I would cling to life because life was at the top of the turning wheel. But like the song of my gypsy-girl, the great wheel turns over and lands on a minor key. It is then that you come of age and life means nothing to you. To live, to die, to overdose, to fall in a coma in the street ... it is all the same. It is only in the peach innocence of youth that life is at its crest on top of the wheel. And there being only life, the young cling to it, they fear death ... And they should! ... For they are in life. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Visions from the gods are gifts alone for those who wander. — 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

Apollinaire said a poet should be 'of his time.' I say objects of the Digital Age belong in newspapers, not literature. When I read a novel, I don't want credit cards; I want cash in ducats and gold doubloons. — Roman Payne

As for you girls, you must risk everything for Freedom, and give everything for Passion, loving everything that your hearts and your bodies love. The only thing higher for a girl and more sacred for a young woman than her freedom and her passion should be her desire to make her life into poetry, surrendering everything she has to create a life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in her imagination. — 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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — 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

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

I fancied my luck to be witnessing yet another full moon. True, I'd seen hundreds of full moons in my life, but they were not limitless. When one starts thinking of the full moon as a common sight that will come again to one's eyes ad-infinitum, the value of life is diminished and life goes by uncherished. 'This may be my last moon,' I sighed, feeling a sudden sweep of sorrow; and went back to reading more of The Odyssey. — Roman Payne

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

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

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. — 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

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

Did I live the spring I'd sought?
It's true in joy, I walked along,
took part in dance,
and sang the song.
and never tried to bind an hour
to my borrowed garden bower;
nor did I once entreat
a day to slumber at my feet.
Yet days aren't lulled by lyric song,
like morning birds they pass along,
o'er crests of trees, to none belong;
o'er crests of trees of drying dew,
their larking flight, my hands, eschew
Thus I'll say it once and true ...
From all that I saw,
and everywhere I wandered,
I learned that time cannot be spent,
It only can be squandered. — 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

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 '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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sexual frenzy is our compensation for the tedious moments we must suffer in the passage of life. 'Nothing in excess,' professed the ancient Greeks. Why if I spend half the month in healthy scholarship and pleasant sleep, shouldn't I be allowed the other half to howl at the moon and pillage the groins of Europe's great beauties? — Roman Payne

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

Wine gives one 'ideas,' whereas champagne gives one 'strategies. — 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

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

[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

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

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

The birthing wolf,
Her heart fed with tenderness,
Gave forth from ripe brown nipples,
Food to feed the universe. — Roman Payne