From all that I saw, and everywhere I wandered, I learned that time cannot be spent. It can only be squandered.
He was no god, just an artist; and when an artist is a man, he needs a woman to create like a god.
Scent is such a powerful tool of attraction, that if a woman has this tool perfectly tuned, she needs no other. I will forgive her a large nose, a cleft lip, even crossed-eyes; and I’ll bathe in the jouissance of her intoxicating odour.
He had been searching for it his entire life. He had devoted himself to poetry to find it. Now, in the middle of his life, he found it. It was in the face of the love of his life, his daughter. She who had never blushed before, now blushed. And in that blushing, he knew, was the existence of God. That was the day her father learned what God was. God was pure beauty, God was his daughter’s face when she blushed.
All that I ask out of life is that it be constant and unending euphoria.
As I look back on my life, I think of how few rules should be followed. As for men, we must learn bravery and live for Pleasure and for Beauty. More important than those two things should stand only one thing for us... 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.
Coffee, my delight of the morning; yoga, my delight of the noon. Then before nightfall, I run along the pleasant paths of the Jardin du Luxembourg. For when air cycles through the lungs, and the body is busy at noble tasks, creativity flows like water in a stream: the artist creates, the writer writes.
Visions from the gods are gifts alone for those who wander.
Even the memory of cradling her in my arms is pure euphoria. And all that I ask out of life is that it be constant and unending euphoria.
Our eyes will know the heavens if our lips stay for each other.
The Love of Europa: She called herself Europa. She was wild in her wandering, a drop of free water. She believed only in her life and in her dreams. She called herself Europa, and her god was Beauty.
After 15 years living in Paris, I felt myself growing old and stagnant – similar to stagnant water sitting in a bowl; cats have a survival instinct not to drink this water. They can sense when it’s old and may be carrying air-borne germs. After 15 years in Paris, I no longer felt drinkable.
A ‘dreamer’ is one possesses the gift of dreaming by day. Sure, many dream at night, but don’t also small babies and animals dream at night? To dream by day and dream aloud: Is this not the reward for all the troubles we humans must face?
Heroic be the Wanderess, the world be her muse.
Being the Novelist-in-Residence at a riad hotel in the kasbah of an Arabic North African city is a lot like trying to write one’s memoirs on shreds of napkins in a nuthouse.
I no longer feel the eternal sublime of magical time. I need my love for that... for I am no god, I am just an artist; and when an artist is a man, he needs a woman to create like a god.
If a writer writes something that he or she has never experienced, I think the reader can sense right away that it is garbage. The only thing that can replace experience, though, is imagination; however it takes experience to grow an imagination.
All that I ask out of life is that it be constant and unending euphoria. And so, I make love and I write.
Yes, in a woman, looks are the most important thing... But it’s not how she looks ‘to’ us, so much as ‘how she looks at’ us.
Learn to write well and you will walk on water and turn wine into opium. You will speak a thousand new tongues and talk to the gods. You will live in constant and everlasting euphoria.
I thought of the fifteen years I lived ‘sans papiers’ in France and how Paris had belonged to me. I was like a king in France. And now that suddenly I was French, Paris was gone for me. I had abdicated the throne the French people had given to me. All those people were gone. The whole city had changed. I left for five years: three spent wandering in Europe, while two years I spent living in Muslim Morocco; and now Paris had changed and there was no going back.