"I fear it is my lot, to bide my days in hunchbacked thought, to find what I forgot."

"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."

"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."

"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."

"Never did the world make a queen of a girl who hides in houses and dreams without traveling."

"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 first love. Those first few weeks in Paris, we barely touched lips; yet the few times we did, it had the force of a collision of stars."

"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 a minor key. It is then that you come of age and life means nothing to you. To live, to die, to overdose, to fall in a coma in the street... it is all the same. 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."

"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."

"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, poppies, smiling, anthills, the color of the sky, coffee and cashmere, literature, sparks and subway trains... If only one could leave this life slowly!"

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

"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."

"I knelt and locked the door. I locked the door locking the world and time outside. I stretched my body across the mattress and Saskia drew in close to me and placed her open hand on my chest, her mouth near my shoulder; her breath, my breath blew out the candle, and I held my lost Wanderess with tenderness until sweet sleep overcame us."

"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."

"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 cursed myself. For once, heaven had sent me "Beauty" in its most perfected form and I abandoned it. She might not have been a girl after all but an angel: a force to guide me on this hazardous path of life I hurry down... How can life be hazardous if it can only end in death?"

"The day came when she discovered sex, sensuality, and literature; she said, 'I submit! Let my life be henceforth ruled by poetry. Let me reign as the queen of my dreams until I become nothing less than the heroine of God."

"What a face this girl possessed!-Could I neither die then nor gaze at her face every day, I would need to recreate it through painting or sculpture, or through fatherhood, until a second such face could be born."

"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."

"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 season of summer is alive in spicy bloom, and beautiful women fill the room, and are generous with laughter and smiles... these things fill men's hearts with joy and remind one that life's bounty is not always fleeting but can be captured, and enjoyed. It is in writing about this scene that I relive this night in my soul."

"Wanderess, Wanderess, weave us a story of seduction and ruse. Heroic be the Wanderess, the world be her muse."

"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 into, the youthful world the young preside over."

"She was so delicate that, while we sat beneath the linden branches, a leaf would fall and drift down and touch her skin, and it would leave a bruise. So as we sat in the afternoon hour, beneath that fragrant linden bower, I had to chase all of the leafs that fell away."

"I was glad to be made awarethat "Veimke (jeune fille au pair),is subject to natural law,and can be made fat,by such things as poor diet,and alcohol."

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

"I was forced to wander, having no one, forced by my nature to keep wandering because wandering was the only thing that I believed in, and the only thing that believed in me."

"He was no god, just an artist; and when an artist is a man, he needs a woman to create like a god."

"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."

"I used to be a poet.My words were traded in marketplaces like pieces of gold.Merchants bought my verses for as much as they paid for saffron and Indian jade.Now I am old...drunk on wine and candle fumes.Alone in this barren room, I speak my psalms to the night air so as to entertain moths before they go off to die.I used to be a poet and my words were gold."

"Did I live the spring I'd sought?It's true in joy, I walked along,took part in dance, and sang the song.and never tried to bind an hourto my borrowed garden bower;nor did I once entreata day to slumber at my feet.Yet days aren't lulled by lyric song,like morning birds they pass along,o'er crests of trees, to none belong;o'er crests of trees of drying dew,their larking flight, my hands, eschewThus I'll say it once and true.From all that I saw, and everywhere I wandered,I learned that time cannot be spent,It only can be squandered."

"Life is not a perpetual climb towards greatness. For our family, ourselves, and friends, it is but sad decay, so let every girl die after her Hebe. And every man after his Aristeia."

"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, clothing, myrrh, perfumed hair, flirting friends, two strangers' glance; the reflection of the moon, with words like, 'Soon' ... 'do you want me?' ... '...to lie enlaced' ... 'and sleep entwined' thinking ahead, with thoughts behind...?' A", Why!Why can't we leave this life slowly?"

"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."

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

"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 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."

"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."

"Passionate attraction to someone of the opposite sex will make a hero or a fool of a novelist each time."

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

"We look up to see if it is day or night. If stars burn cool and moon does shine, We take to smoke divine and wine.If breath of sun does belch its heat,we boil coffee and prepare to eat."

"The poet believed that 'Beauty' first entered the world not at its creation, nor with the first garden, the first sunrise, the birth of the first man and woman and their first sexual act. The poet believed that 'Beauty' entered the world the day the first child blushed."

"We were hooked when we woke.We had arms for each other.But I yearned to resumeMy dreams of another."

"In general I strive for greatness and rational achievement, but I admit to you I've a terrible fondness for women, a tendency towards drunkenness, and a weakness for the fumes of the poppy-opium and other miserable beauties."

"From all that I saw, and everywhere I wandered, I learned that time cannot be spent. It can only be squandered."

"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."

"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."

"Everything was brighter and more colorful in those years, as if my childhood was ending in an explosion of unreal passion that made my life feel sacred and holy."

"Alexander the Great slept with 'The Iliad' beneath his pillow. During the waning moon, I cradle Homer's 'Odyssey' as if it were the sweet body of a woman."

"A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander."

"There are times when a man should sleep entwined in the warm flesh of a woman, his flanks plummeting into the perfumed bedding while she lovingly rolls her sweet shoulders into his chest. Whereas, there are times to be stoic and solitary-sleeping alone on a wooden board with twill sheets and splinters that scratch the skin."

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