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...

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...

All that I desire in life are three…A wilderness: A beach on the sun-drenched sea,A puff of opium,And thee.

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.

When I met a truly beautiful girl, I would tell her that if she spent the night with me, I would write a novel or a story about her. This usually worked; and if her...

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...

I used to be a poet.My words were traded in marketplaces like pieces of gold.Merchants bought my verses for as much as they paid for saffron and Indian jade.Now I am old…drunk on wine and...

The birthing wolf,Her heart fed with tenderness,Gave forth from ripe brown nipples,Food to feed the universe.

All I want in this life are three…a moonlit beach on the starlit sea,a breath of opium, and thee.

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

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...

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...

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...

Women are extraordinary creatures!

In my experience, when a woman’s cruelty is combined with love and devotion, it is almost always without exception an act performed not out of treachery, but as a painful self-sacrifice for the good of...

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.

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

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...

Without knowing why or how, I found myself in love with this strange Wanderess. Maybe I was just in love with the dream she was selling me: a life of destiny and fate; as my...

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...

Rest in Peace?’ Why that phrase? That’s the most ridiculous phrase I’ve ever heard! You die, and they say ‘Rest in Peace!’ …Why would one need to ‘rest’ when they’re dead?! I spent thousands of...

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.

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...

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...

Veimke” (jeune fille au pair),is subject to natural law,and can be made fat,by such things as poor diet,and alcohol.

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...

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...

As for girls, they must risk everything for freedom, and give everything for passion… loving everything that their hearts and their bodies love. The only thing higher for a girl and more sacred for a...

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 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...

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.

English:Ô, take this eager dance you fool, don’t brandish your stick at me. I have several reasons to travel on, on to the endless sea: I have lost my love. I’ve drunk my purse. My...

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...

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...

The comedy in our lives was those first few weeks we lived together in Paris: Our bodies desired one another, our souls opened for one another. We experienced all of the happiness and anguish of...

It is growing cold. Winter is putting footsteps in the meadow. What whiteness boasts that sun that comes into this wood! One would say milk-colored maidens are dancing on the petals of orchids. How coldly...

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...

Wanderess, Wanderess, weave us a story of seduction and ruse. Heroic be the Wanderess, the world be her muse.’…I jot this phrase of invocation in my old leather-bound notebook on a bright, cold morning at...

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...

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

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.

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,...

88.People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I’ve been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it’s the best place to pick ideas. Just like...

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

It’s not that we have to leave this life one day, it’s how many things we have to leave all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, wine, summertime, drunkenness, and the physics of falling leaves,...

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.

I’ve been lying in the grass. All morning long, I lay here waiting for the dawn.

I fancied my luck to be witnessing yet another full moon. True, I’d seen hundreds of full moons in my life, but they were not limitless. When one starts thinking of the full moon as...

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...

I care not that this moment’s lot was thin and sparsely dealt; all pleasures sweet can be forgot the instant they are felt.