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"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 the sweet body of a woman."
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Exlpore more Literature quotes

"The lot of the brideto be wed before beddesired until rotten.The lot of the authorto be read before bedadmired then forgotten."

"An editor should tell the author his writing is better than it is. Not a lot better, a little better."

"Rain's pouring and it's too cold. All people bored and I even accord What to do but spell a tale told: So once upon a time a land in the shore..."

"The thing that teases the mind over and over for years, and at last gets itself put down rightly on paper whether little or great, it belongs to Literature."

"Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it."

"Not that length and weight alone indicate excellence, many epic tales are pretty much epic crap."

"Tolkien did admit that, 'As a guide, I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving.' In other words ~ he wrote about what interested him ~ and despite his protestation of including anything allegorical into his tale, Catholic history and mystic prophecy obviously received its fair share of attention ..."

"I found it hard to think of leaving my books. They had been my elevators out of the midden, and to whom could I entrust such close friends?"

"I read for pleasure and that is the moment I learn the most."

"I wasn't discriminating in my reading, and I'm still not. I read then primarily to be entertained, as I do now. And I'm not saying that apologetically: I feel that if you remove the initial gut response from reading - the delight or excitement or simply the enjoyment of being told a story - and try to concentrate on the meaning or the shape of the "message" first, you might as well give up, it's too much like all work and no play."
Explore more quotes by Roman Payne

"As a very young man, I thought of Europe as a place that could not exist except in the imagination, in glorious dreams, and through the careful lies of the silver screen."

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

"When no possessions keep us, when no countries contain us, and no time detains us, man becomes a heroic wanderer, and woman, a wanderess."

"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."

"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 should! ...For they are in life."

"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 of beauty is the most despairing of events on this time-wheel of ours that rolls onward towards death."

"The artist's greatest creation beganthe night he washed his memory of his failuresrubbed opium on his lipsdrank the wine that women offered himand lay down and wept."

"What is a Wanderess? Bound by no boundaries, contained by no countries, tamed by no time, she is the force of nature's course."

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

"The season was waning fastOur nights were growing cold at lastI took her to bed with silk and song,'Lay still, my love, I won't be long;I must prepare my body for passion.''O, your body you give, but all else you ration.''It is because of these dreams of a sylvan scene:A bleeding nymph to leave me serene...I have dreams of a trembling wench.''You have dreams,' she said, 'that cannot be quenched.''Our passion,' said I, 'should never be feared;As our longing for love can never be cured.Our want is our way and our way is our will,We have the love, my love, that no one can kill.''If night is your love, then in dreams you'll fulfill...This love, our love, that no one can kill.'Yet want is my way, and my way is my will,Thus I killed my love with a sleeping pill."
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