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
Analogies are like lies. - Roman Payne
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. - Roman Payne
May a man live well-, and long-enough, to leave many joyful widows behind him. - Roman Payne
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. - 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
You must give everything to make your life as beautiful as the dreams that dance in your imagination. - Roman Payne
Spanish rain,A maiden’s dress,Apothecary pillsAnd ancient thrills;Melancholy killsA girl’s caress.(—; Valencia, Spain, November 2nd 2012) - Roman Payne
The moment her hymen was plucked from her body in the wilderness, Her soul was taken from sanity. - 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
Just as a painter paints,and a ponderer ponders,a writer writes,and a wanderer wanders. - Roman Payne
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. - Roman Payne
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). - Roman Payne
From flophouse bedTo poorhouse bread,all outhouse sorrow:I thee wed. - Roman Payne
She called herself Europa, and wandered the world from girlhood till death. She believed only in her life and in her dreams. She called herself Europa, 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
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. - Roman Payne
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. - Roman Payne
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. - 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
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
No man sings as beautifully as when his song is accompanied by a woman’s voice. - Roman Payne
In life, more than in anything else, it isn’t easy to end up alive. - Roman Payne
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. - 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
A glorious death would be in myfinal breath to take before I die, to hearone final time on my belovèd's mouththe sound of her eternal sigh. - Roman Payne
I fear it is my lot, to bide my days in hunchbacked thought, to find what I forgot. - 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
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
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
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
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
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 only in her dreams. She called herself an angel, and her god was Beauty. - 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
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
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. - Roman Payne
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. - Roman Payne
Wanderess, Wanderess, weave us a story of seduction and ruse. Heroic be the Wanderess, the world be her muse. - 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
Ô, Sunlight! The most precious gold to be found on Earth. - 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
She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water. She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs. 'Time' for her isn’t something to fight against. Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water. - 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
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. - Roman Payne
We were hooked when we woke.We had arms for each other.But I yearned to resumeMy dreams of another. - 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
When she was a child, my love carried a road-map in her hand the way other girls carried handkerchiefs. - Roman Payne
All I want in this life are three...a moonlit beach on the starlit sea,a breath of opium, and thee. - Roman Payne
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. - Roman Payne
Everything was brighter and more colorful in those years, as if my youth was ending in an explosion of unreal passion. Memories like these make my life sacred and holy. - Roman Payne
In my errant life I roamedto learn the secrets of women and men,of gods and dreams.I lived in wealth and poverty, in fame and calamity.I saw every country of our world,I lived a thousand lives.Many lives I spent, other lives I squandered,for in my life I never traveled, all I did was wander. - Roman Payne
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 - Roman Payne
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. - Roman Payne
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. - 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 lot of the brideto be wed before beddesired until rotten.The lot of the authorto be read before bedadmired then forgotten. - Roman Payne
When I touched her body,I believed she was God.In the curves of her formI found the birth of Man,the creation of the world,and the origin of all life. - Roman Payne
Fortune's fool! How we humans lie upon beauty like lizards upon a sun-baked rock. - Roman Payne
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. - 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
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
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. - Roman Payne
Spanish rain,A maiden’s dress,Apothecary pillsAnd ancient thrills;Melancholy killsA girl’s caress. - 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
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
Wine gives one 'ideas,' whereas champagne gives one 'strategies. - Roman Payne
Women are extraordinary creatures! - 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
The birthing wolf,Her heart fed with tenderness,Gave forth from ripe brown nipples,Food to feed the universe. - Roman Payne
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. - Roman Payne
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. - Roman Payne