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Roman Payne

"With the need for the self in the time of another / I left my seaport grim and dear / knowing good work could be made / in the state governed by both Hope and Despair."

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"With the need for the self in the time of another / I left my seaport grim and dear / knowing good work could be made / in the state governed by both Hope and Despair."

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Asa Don Brown

"I love writing poetry because it's pretty. I love writing pretty."

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"A poet is not an inventor. A poet is a player that plays with words on the field of human imagination to excite a reader's mind with the colors of emotion."

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"Old wives keep in memory word of things that once were needful for the wise to know."

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Asa Don Brown

"Amore is loveconfessed to you in haiku.Do you love me too?"

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Asa Don Brown

"The lamp hummed:'Regard the moon,La lune ne garde aucune rancune,She winks a feeble eye,She smiles into corners.She smoothes the hair of the grass.The moon has lost her memory.A washed-out smallpox cracks her face,Her hand twists a paper rose,That smells of dust and old Cologne,She is aloneWith all the old nocturnal smellsThat cross and cross across her brain."The reminiscence comesOf sunless dry geraniumsAnd dust in crevices,Smells of chestnuts in the streets,And female smells in shuttered rooms,And cigarettes in corridorsAnd cocktail smells in bars."

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Asa Don Brown

"Poets are shameless with their experiences: they exploit them."

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Asa Don Brown

"Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves."

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Asa Don Brown

"It is strange how a scrap of poetry works in the mind and makes the legs move in time to it along the road."

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Asa Don Brown

"In a real poem a sound does not swallow a letter, but a letter swallows a sound."

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Asa Don Brown

"Sometimes poets expect me to think far deeper than I'm willing to dig."

Explore more quotes by Roman Payne

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Roman Payne
"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 hair."
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Roman Payne
"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 years of world history resting. While Agamemnon was leading his ships to Troy, I was resting. While Ovid was seducing women at the chariot races, I was resting. While Jeanne d'Arc was hallucinating, I was resting. I wait until airplanes are scuttling across the sky to burst out onto the scene, and I'm only going to be here for a short while, so when I die, I certainly won't need to rest again! Not while more adventures of the same kind are going on."
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Roman Payne
"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 Italy, Spain.. or Iran are the best places to pick saffron. If you want to pick opium poppies you go to Burma or South-East Asia. And if you want to pick novel ideas, you go to Paris."
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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?"
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Roman Payne
"We were hooked when we woke.We had arms for each other.But I yearned to resumeMy dreams of another."
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Roman Payne
"The youthful body untouched decays the fastest, for no living hands record its splendor; and here youth and time are wasted."
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Roman Payne
"I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side."
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Roman Payne
"He was no god, just an artist; and when an artist is a man, he needs a woman to create like a god."
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Roman Payne
"After joyfully working each morning, I would leave off around midday to challenge myself to a footrace. Speeding along the sunny paths of the Jardin du Luxembourg, ideas would breed like aphids in my head-for creative invention is easy and sublime when air cycles quickly through the lungs and the body is busy at noble tasks."
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Roman Payne
"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 own life up until we met had been so void of enchantment. Those things: mystery, fate, 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 into, the youthful world they preside over."
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