#roman

"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."

"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."

"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."

"You will not pass!” Roman thundered.Great. Now he had decided he was Gandalf."

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

"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, as 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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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?"

"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."

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

"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."

"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)."

"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."