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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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.

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...

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.

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...

When I was younger, I would cling to life because life was at the top of the turning wheel. But like the song of my gypsy girl, the great wheel turns over and lands on...

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

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.

I met Anne in the autumn… Autumn, that wild season when rural men rack orchard trees with sticks and weep with the desire to kiss faraway Demeter’s supple breasts—to set lips to her travel-swollen eyes....

Mine was the twilight and the morning. Mine was a world of rooftops and love songs.

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.

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

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.

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

Visions from the gods are gifts alone for those who wander.

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.

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...

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

I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side.

A tired man lay down his headin a dusty room so dim,and for so long his wife did shakeand yell to waken him.Meanwhile his thoughts, his dreams, did stirof sandy, red bullfights,of powder-blasts in the...

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!

Her body accepted my brutal seed and took it to swell within, just as the patient earth accepts a falling fruit into its tender soil to cradle and nourish it to grow. Came a time,...

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...

Not to waste the springI threw down everything,And ran into the open worldTo sing what I could sing…To dance what I could dance!And join with everyone!I wandered with a reckless heartbeneath the newborn sun.First stepping...

In life, more than in anything else, it isn’t easy to end up alive.

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...

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.

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

The youthful body untouched decays the fastest, for no living hands record its splendor; and here youth and time are wasted.

I was angry at myself for my inclination to vice. I longed for the day when a state of frenzy would lead my mind to sober pasture, just as it had for Saint Augustine. I...

Champagne arrived in flûtes on trays, and we emptied them with gladness in our hearts… for when feasts are laid and classical music is played, where champagne is drunk once the sun has sunk and...

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...

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.

In my errant life I roamedTo learn the secrets of women and men,Of gods and dreams.I’ve known all the countries of our world,I’ve lived a thousand lives:Many lives I lived in love, Other lives I...