Quotes by 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.

Mine was the twilight and the morning. Mine was a world of rooftops and love songs.

It’s not that we have to quit this life one day, it’s how many things we have to quit all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, music, the physics of falling leaves, vanilla and jasmine, poppies, smiling, anthills, the color of the sky, coffee and cashmere, literature, sparks and subway trains... If only one could leave this life slowly!

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!

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

I ran across an excerpt today (in English translation) of some dialogue/narration from the modern popular writer, Paulo Coelho in his book: Aleph.(Note: bracketed text is mine.)... I spoke to three scholars, [the character says at last.] ...two of them said that, after death, the [sic (misprint, fault of the publisher)] just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran. [end quote] ...I can see that hes excited. [narrator] ...Now I have many positive things to say about Coelho: He is respectable, inspiring as a man, a truth-seeker, and an appealing writer; but one should hesitate to call him a literary writer based on this quote. A literary author knows that a characters excitement should be shown in his or her dialogue and not in the narrators commentary on it. Advice for Coelho: Remove the I can see that hes excited sentence and show his excitement in the phrasing of his quote.(Now, in defense of Coelho, I am firmly of the opinion, having myself written plenty of prose that is flawed, that a novelist should be forgiven for slipping here and there.)Lastly, it appears that a belief in reincarnation is of great interest to Mr. Coelho ... Just think! He is a man who has achieved, (as Leonard Cohen would call it), a remote human possibility. He has won lots of fame and tons of money. And yet, how his preoccupation with reincarnation—none other than an interest in being born again as somebody else—suggests that he is not happy!

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

The day came when she discovered sex, sensuality, and literature; she said, I submit! Let my life be henceforth ruled by poetry. Let me reign as the queen of my dreams until I become nothing less than the heroine of God.

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.

Ô, Muse of the Heart’s Passion,let me relive my Love’s memory,to remember her body, so brave and so free,and the sound of my Dreameress singing to me,and the scent of my Dreameress sleeping by me,Ô, sing, sweet Muse, my soliloquy!

Ô, Sunlight! The most precious gold to be found on Earth.

Champagne arrived in flûtes on trays, and we emptied them with gladness in our hearts... for when feasts are laid and classical music is played, where champagne is drunk once the sun has sunk and the season of summer is alive in spicy bloom, and beautiful women fill the room, and are generous with laughter and smiles... these things fill mens hearts with joy and remind one that life’s bounty is not always fleeting but can be captured, and enjoyed. It is in writing about this scene that I relive this night in my soul.

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).

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?

When a Wanderess has been caged, or perched with her wings clipped, She lives like a Stoic, She lives most heroic, smiling with ruby, moistened lips once her cup of Death is welcome sipped.

A woman must prefer her liberty over a man. To be happy, she must. A man to be happy, however, must yearn for his woman more than his liberty. This is the rightful order.

When no possessions keep us, when no countries contain us, and no time detains us, man becomes a heroic wanderer, and woman, a wanderess.

What is a Wanderess? Bound by no boundaries, contained by no countries, tamed by no time, she is the force of nature’s course.

He was no god, just an artist; and when an artist is a man, he needs a woman to create like a god.

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