Roman Payne Quotes

Biography

Type: Novelist

Born: 1977

Died: 0

Roman Payne is an American-born novelist who immigrated to France in 1999. He is known for his poetic language, his return to classicism (what he terms "heroic" prose), and for his tales of initiation and wandering. Although he writes in English, his life in Paris, speaking entirely French, has influenced his work giving his prose an unusual Latinate quality. He is heavily influenced by Homeric Epic, as well as 18th and 19th Century French and European literature.

Roman Payne Quotes

She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water. She
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.

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

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!

Mine was the twilight and the morning. Mine was a world of rooftops and love songs..
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.. Roman Payne
In life, more than in anything else, it isn’t easy to end up alive.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

The lot of the bride
to be wed before bed
desired until rotten.
The lot of the author
to be read before bed
admired then forgotten.

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.

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.

To wander is to be alive.. Roman Payne
To wander is to be alive.

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

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.

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.

A writer needs to ingest love to be passionate. Passion is a metabolite of love, and good writing is an active metabolite of passion.

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?

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).

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

In Sanskrit, there exists no word for ‘The Individual’ (L’Individu). En Grèce antique, il n’y avait aucun mot pour dire ‘Devoir’ (Duty). In French, the word for ‘Wife’ is the same as the word for ‘Woman.’ En anglais, nous n’avons aucun mot semblable à l’exquise ‘Jouissance!

Although I love elegant parties, dancing and dining and spending the night with a sweet woman in my arms, my life belongs to literature.

Spanish rain,
A maiden’s dress,
Apothecary pills
And ancient thrills;
Melancholy kills
A girl’s caress.

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

She 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;
her breath is my wine,
her scent is my soul.

Women are extraordinary creatures!

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.

Wherever you go in the next
catastrophé
Be it sickroom, or prison,
or cemet’ry
Do not fear that your stay will be
solit’ry
Countless souls share your fate,
you’ll have company!

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.

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

A glorious death would be in my
final breath to take before I die, to hear
one final time on my belovèd's mouth
the sound of her eternal sigh.

A girl without braids is like a mountain without waterfalls.

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.

I cursed myself. For once, heaven had sent me "Beauty" in its most perfected form and I abandoned it. She might not have been a girl after all but an angel: a force to guide me on this hazardous path of life I hurry down... How can life be hazardous if it can only end in death?

The disappearance of the presence of beauty is the most despairing of events on this time-wheel of ours that rolls onward towards death.

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.

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.

A girl without braids
is like a city without bridges.

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.

You are like a god, like an immortal one,' she whispered to me one night in our bed, her naked body pressed to mine, our sweat golden and glistening in the candlelight. 'Oh, my love,' I whispered back to her, 'I am more mortal than all. It seems that a part of me dies every night that I lie with you.

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.

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.

There are times when a man should sleep entwined in the warm flesh of a woman, his flanks plummeting into the perfumed bedding while she lovingly rolls her sweet shoulders into his chest. Whereas, there are times to be stoic and solitary - sleeping alone on a wooden board with twill sheets and splinters that scratch the skin.

This was how it was with travel: one city gives you gifts, another robs you. One gives you the heart’s affections, the other destroys your soul. Cities and countries are as alive and feeling, as fickle and uncertain as people. Their degrees of love and devotion are as varying as with any human relation. Just as one is good, another is bad.

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

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

She was a free bird one minute: queen of the world and laughing. The next minute she would be in tears like a porcelain angel, about to teeter, fall and break. She never cried because she was afraid that something 'would' happen; she would cry because she feared something that could render the world more beautiful, 'would not' happen.

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).

Intoxication, like sexual euphoria, is the privilege of the human animal.

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.

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

No man sings as beautifully as when his song is accompanied by a woman’s voice.

When she was a child,
my love carried a road map in her hand
the way other girls carried handkerchiefs.

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

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 life
for our love is whole
I sing her beauty
in my soul.

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.

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.

It was a time I slept in many rooms, called myself by many names. I wandered through the quarters of the city like alluvium wanders the river banks. I knew every kind of joy, ascents of every hue. Mine was the twilight and the morning. Mine was a world of rooftops and love songs.

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.

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

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.

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...

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

I saw this moment as attached by threads to eternity and woven between all the other braided moments of my past and my future.

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.

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.

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