Mine was the twilight and the morning. Mine was a world of rooftops and love songs.
In life, more than in anything else, it isn’t easy to end up alive.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Be there a picnic for the devil,an orgy for the satyr,and a wedding for the bride.
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…
We made love outdoorsWithout 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.
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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
From all that I saw, and everywhere I wandered, I learned that time cannot be spent. It can only be squandered.
I care not that this moment’s lot was thin and sparsely dealt all pleasures sweet can be forgot the instant they are felt.
The youthful body untouched decays the fastest, for no living hands record its splendor; and here youth and time are wasted.
The lot of the brideto be wed before beddesired until rotten.The lot of the authorto be read before bedadmired then forgotten.
May a man live well-, and long-enough, to leave many joyful widows behind him.
I regained my soul through literature after those times I’d lost it to wild-eyed gypsy girls on the European streets.
Ô, the wine of a woman from heaven is sent,more perfect than all that a man can invent.
Never did the world make a queen of a girl who hides in houses and dreams without traveling.
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.
They say Alexander the Great slept with ‘The Iliad’ beneath his pillow. Though I have never led an army, I am a wanderer. During the waning moon, I cradle Homer’s ‘Odyssey’ as if it were the sweet body of a woman.
I was glad to be made awarethat “Veimke” (jeune fille au pair),is subject to natural law,and can be made fat,by such things as poor diet,and alcohol.
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.
I’ve seen knives pierce the chest,Children dying in the roadCrawling things hooked and baited,Rapists bound and then castrated,Villains singed in public square.Yet none these sights did make me cringeLike when my Love cut all her hair.
Fortune’s fool! How we humans lie upon beauty like lizards upon a sun-baked rock.
All forms of madness, bizarre habits, awkwardness in society, general clumsiness, are justified in the person who creates good art.
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.
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.
From flophouse bedTo poorhouse bread,all outhouse sorrow:I thee wed.
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.
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.
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.
The moment her hymen was plucked from her body in the wilderness, Her soul was taken from sanity.
All that I ask out of life is that it be constant and unending euphoria.
Even the memory of cradling her in my arms is pure euphoria. And all that I ask out of life is that it be constant and unending euphoria.
Ô, wine!, the truth-serum so potent that all those who wish to live happy lives should abstain from drinking it entirely!… except of course when they are alone.
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.
What a face this girl possessed!—Could I neither die then nor gaze at her face every day, I would need to recreate it through painting or sculpture, or through fatherhood, until a second such face could be born.
I saw this moment as attached by threads to eternity and woven between all the other braided moments of my past and my future.
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.
Although I love elegant parties, dancing and dining and spending the night with a sweet woman in my arms, my life belongs to literature.
Looking back on my life, I sigh. The caprice of youth goes with the wind, I’ve no regrets.
The disappearance of the presence of beauty is the most despairing of events on this time-wheel of ours that rolls onward towards death.
Life is Not a perpetual climb towards Greatness.For our family, ourselves, and friends,It is but sad Decay, so,Let every girl die after her Hebé (Ἥβη).And every man after his Aristeia(ἀριστεία).
Wherever you go in the next catastrophéBe it sickroom, or prison, or cemet’ryDo not fear that your stay will besolit’ryCountless souls share your fate,you’ll have company!
May a man live well-enough and long-enough, to leave many joyful widows behind him.
I fear it is my lot, to bide my days in hunchbacked thought, to find what I forgot.
I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side.
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.
From all that I saw,and everywhere I wandered,I learned that time cannot be spent,It only can be squandered.
[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.
The artist’s greatest creation beganthe night he washed his memory of his failuresrubbed opium on his lipsdrank the wine that women offered himand lay down and wept.
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.
All that I desire in life are three…A wilderness: A beach on the sun-drenched sea,A puff of opium,And thee.
Ah, youth!It was a beautiful night…The moon was out of orbit.The stars were awry.But everything else was exactlyas it should have been.
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.
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.
Passionate attraction to someone of the opposite sex will make a hero or a fool of a novelist each time.
A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite of passion.
The birthing wolf,Her heart fed with tenderness,Gave forth from ripe brown nipples,Food to feed the universe.
I’ve seen daggers 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 cringeLike when my Love cut all her hair.
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.
No man sings as beautifully as when his song is accompanied by a woman’s voice.
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.
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.
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.
Our eyes will know the heavens if our lips stay for each other.
Never had we ever kissed as lovers; if we touched lips it was as brother and sister. In one moment of emotion, our lips fell together by accident, but we quickly removed ourselves as though we were children touching glass with dirty hands.
My Love wakes in a puddle of sunlight.Her hands asleep beside her.Her hair draped on the lawnlike a mantle of cloth.I give her my troth, for our love is wholeI sing her beauty in my soul
She wakes in a puddle of sunlight.Her hands asleep beside her.Her hair draped on the lawnlike a mantle of cloth.I give her my trothfor our love is whole;her breath is my wine,her scent is my soul.
Spanish rain,A maiden’s dress,Apothecary pillsAnd ancient thrills;Melancholy killsA girl’s caress.
Spanish rain,A maiden’s dress,Apothecary pillsAnd ancient thrills;Melancholy killsA girl’s caress.(—Roman Payne; Valencia, Spain, November 2nd 2012)
Wanderess, Wanderess, weave us a story of seduction and ruse. Heroic be the Wanderess, the world be her muse.
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.
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.
My Love wakes in a puddle of sunlight.Her hands asleep beside her.Her hair draped on the lawnlike a mantle of cloth.I give her my lifefor our love is wholeI sing her beauty in my soul.
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.
Wine gives one ‘ideas,’ whereas champagne gives one ‘strategies.
Intoxication, like sexual euphoria, is the privilege of the human animal.
She is my morning, she is my evening; we have a love that blooms over and again, more beautifully each time than the last.
A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander.
Who worries for dying? If I close my eyes tonight, I will either dream, or not, or my eyes will open and I will be here again. And if none of those happen, and I do not wake? Who worries for dying?
A girl without braids is like a city without bridges.
What a face this girl possessed!—could I not gaze at it every day I would need to recreate it through painting, sculpture, or fatherhood until a second such face is born.
A girl without braidsis like a city without bridges.
If you love my work, you are a good critic. If you do not love my work, you are a ‘not good’ critic.
Opium: that terrible truth serum. Dark secrets guarded for a lifetime can be divulged with carefree folly after a sip of the black smoke.
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.
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?
Visions from the gods are gifts alone for those who wander.