Roman Payne Quotes

“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. Her face, at once innocent and feral, soft and wild! Her mouth voluptuous. Eyes deep as oceans, her eyes as wide as planets. I likened her to the slender Psyché and judged that the perfection of her face ennobled everything unclean around her: the dusty hems of her bunched-up skirt, the worn straps of her nightshirt; the blackened soles of her tiny bare feet, the coal-stained balcony bricks upon which she sat, and that dusty wrought-ironwork that framed her perch. All this and the pungent air!—almost foul, with so many odors. Ô, that and the spicy night! …Pungency, spice, filth and night, dust and light; all things dark did blossom in sight; flower and bloom, the night has its pearl too—the moon! And once a month it will make the face of this tender girl bloom.”
― Roman Payne

“Wine gives one 'ideas,' whereas champagne gives one 'strategies.”
― Roman Payne

“Looking back on my life, I sigh. The caprice of youth goes with the wind, I’ve no regrets.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

“Spanish rain,
A maiden’s dress,
Apothecary pills
And ancient thrills;
Melancholy kills
A girl’s caress.”
― 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, The Basement Trains: A 21st Century Poem

“This was the first time I thought of S— that day. Her music was beautiful, her voice was beautiful, her body was beautiful. Even the dirty little pads of her feet were beautiful. I cursed myself then. 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?”
― Roman Payne

“Womankind always seems to be able to see a dozen steps into the future, far ahead of what men are able to see. And they have strength where we do not.”
― Roman Payne

“Spanish rain,
A maiden’s dress,
Apothecary pills
And ancient thrills;
Melancholy kills
A girl’s caress.
(—Roman Payne; Valencia, Spain, November 2nd 2012)”
― Roman Payne

“I likened her to the slender PSYCHÉ and judged that the perfection of her face ennobled everything unclean around her: The dusty hems of her bunched-up skirt, the worn straps of her nightshirt; the blackened soles of her bare feet [...] All this and the pungent air! Ô this night, sweet pungent night! "HÉBÉ" may come but a season. But this girl's season would know a hot spring
and an Indian summer.”
― 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

“Wanderess, Wanderess,
weave us a story of seduction and ruse.
Heroic be the Wanderess,
the world be her muse.”
― 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.
I give her my troth
for our love is whole;
her breath is my wine,
her scent is my soul.”
― 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

“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

“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

“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

“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?”
― Roman Payne