Julia Ackerman > Julia's Quotes

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#1

“Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.”
― Winston Churchill

46 likes

#2

“When Winston Churchill was asked to cut arts funding in favour of the war effort, he simply asked,'then what are we fighting for?”
― Kazuo Ishiguro

29 likes

#3

“It’s not that we have to quit
this life one day, but it’s how
many things we have to quit
all at once: music, laughter,
the physics of falling leaves,
automobiles, holding hands,
the scent of rain, the concept
of subway trains... if only one
could leave this life slowly!”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

tags: automobiles, beauty, carpe-diem, dying, holding-hands, laughter, leaves, life, loss, music, rain, regret, sorrow, subway, trains

493 likes

#4

“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!”
― Roman Payne, Hope and Despair

tags: beauty, death, dying, life, loss, love, regret, sorrow, time

256 likes

#5

“All forms of madness, bizarre habits, awkwardness in society, general clumsiness, are justified in the person who creates good art.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

tags: art, artists, awkwardness, bizarre, clumsiness, good-art, literature, madness, roman-payne, strangeness, weird

449 likes

#6

“I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

tags: adventure, exploration, good-luck, luck, payne, roman, roman-payne, travel, wandering

568 likes

#7

“In life, more than in anything else, it isn’t easy to end up alive.”
― Roman Payne

tags: accidents, death, dying, funny, humor, humour, life, truism

130 likes

#8

“Cities were always like people, showing their varying personalities to the traveler. Depending on the city and on the traveler, there might begin a mutual love, or dislike, friendship, or enmity. Where one city will rise a certain individual to glory, it will destroy another who is not suited to its personality. Only through travel can we know where we belong or not, where we are loved and where we are rejected.”
― Roman Payne, Cities & Countries

tags: cities, cities-and-countries, city, enmity, glory, love, novel-quote, personalities, rejection, roman-payne, travel, traveler, travelling, urban, voyage

439 likes

#9

“Mine was the twilight and the morning. Mine was a world of rooftops and love songs.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

tags: love, love-songs, morning, paris, quote, roman-payne, romance, rooftop-soliloquy, rooftops, twilight

255 likes

#10

“The ‘Muse’ is not an artistic mystery, but a mathematical equation. The gift are those ideas you think of as you drift to sleep. The giver is that one you think of when you first awake.”
― Roman Payne

tags: art, artistic, creativity, equations, gifts, ideas, inspiration, literature, math, mathematical, mathematics, muse, muses, mysteries, mystery, payne, sleep, sleeping, waking

168 likes

#11

“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.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

tags: affairs, fathers, husbands, liars, lovers, lying, relations, relationships, roman, roman-payne, sex, women-writers, writing

154 likes

#12

“I was surrounded by friends, my work was immense, and pleasures were abundant. Life, now, was unfolding before me, constantly and visibly, like the flowers of summer that drop fanlike petals on eternal soil. Overall, I was happiest to be alone; for it was then I was most aware of what I possessed. Free to look out over the rooftops of the city. Happy to be alone in the company of friends, the company of lovers and strangers. Everything, I decided, in this life, was pure pleasure.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

tags: abundance, alone, aloneness, company, flowers, friends, joy, life, pleasure, pleasures, possessions, roman-payne, solitude, summer

159 likes

#13

“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.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

tags: adventures, agamemnon, carpe-diem, death, jeanne-of-arc, mythology, ovid, seize-the-day, troy

84 likes

#14

“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.”
― Roman Payne

tags: dreams, flower, garden, love, moments, morning, opium, payne, poetry, posture, quietness, roman, silence, sleep, yoga

122 likes

#15

“We were hooked when we woke.
We had arms for each other.
But I yearned to resume
My dreams of another.”
― Roman Payne

tags: affair, affairs, betrayal, dreams, nocturnal, poetry, romance, sleeping

106 likes

#16

“I regained my soul through literature after those times I'd lost it to wild-eyed gypsy girls on the European streets.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

tags: books, europe, fortune, fortunes, gypsies, gypsy, literature, payne, reading, roman, roman-payne, soul, streets

107 likes

#17

“From all that I saw, and everywhere I wandered, I learned that time cannot be spent. It can only be squandered.”
― Roman Payne

67 likes

#18

“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.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

tags: alexander-the-great, classics, dreams, greek, heroism, homer, roman, sleep, the-iliad, the-odyssey, waning-moon, women

81 likes

#19

“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.”
― Roman Payne

tags: affection, bruise, chivalry, courtesy, courting, delicate, feminity, gentleman, girl, linden, linden-tree, masculinity, roman-payne

101 likes

#20

“When I met a truly beautiful girl, I would tell her that if she spent the night with me, I would write a novel or a story about her. This usually worked; and if her name was to be in the title of the story, it almost always worked. Then, later, when we'd passed a night of delicious love-making together, after she’d gone and I’d felt that feeling of happiness mixed with sorrow, I sometimes would write a book or story about her. Sometimes her character, her way about herself, her love-making, it sometimes marked me so heavily that I couldn't go on in life and be happy unless I wrote a book or a story about that woman, the happy and sad memory of that woman. That was the only way to keep her, and to say goodbye to her without her ever leaving.”
― Roman Payne

tags: how-to-write, inspiration, literature, love-making, romance, seduction, sex, stories, women, writing, writing-advice, writing-novels

81 likes

#21

“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.”
― Roman Payne, Cities & Countries

tags: affections, bad, cities, cities-and-countries, city, good, payne, roman, soul, travel, voyage

177 likes

#22

“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.”
― Roman Payne, Crepuscule

tags: asia, burma, creativity, expatriate, expatriot, expats, france, ideas, inspiration, opiate, opiates, opium, paris, parisians, poppies, saffron, travel, writer-s-block, writing

96 likes

#23

“To wish a healthy man to die is the wish from a mind of sickness. To wish an ailing man to die is the wish of the ambitious.”
― Roman Payne

tags: ambition, desire, health, ill, illness, sickness, wish, wishes

47 likes

#24

“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.”
― Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

tags: alexander-the-great, army, dreams, heroism, sleep, the-iliad, the-odyssey, traveling, wandering, waning-moon, wayfaring, women

46 likes

#25

“I’ve seen knives pierce the chest,
Children dying in the road
Crawling things hooked and baited,
Rapists bound and then castrated,
Villains singed in public square.
Yet none these sights did make me cringe
Like when my Love cut all her hair.”
― Roman Payne

tags: aesthetic-beauty, beauty, cutting-hair, destruction, hair, haircut, love, pain, regret, violence

44 likes

#26

“I care not that this moment’s lot was thin and sparsely dealt; all pleasures sweet can be forgot the instant they are felt.”
― Roman Payne

tags: pain, payne, pleasure, time

32 likes

#27

“Who is better off? The one who writes to revel in the voluptuousness of the life that surrounds them? Or the one who writes to escape the tediousness of that which awaits them outside? Whose flame will last longer?”
― Roman Payne

tags: author-interview, books, escape, flame, heroic, heroism, interview, novel-writing, novelist, publishing, roman, roman-payne, tediousness, voluptuousness, writer, writers, writing

45 likes

#28

“I fear it is my lot, to bide my days in hunchbacked thought, to find what I forgot.”
― Roman Payne

33 likes

#29

“I will always know the glory of the beautiful and rare, as they will know security from labour and prayer. As they will hear the laughter of the children they gave life, I will know the torments of the song born under knife.”
― Roman Payne

tags: art, artists, creation, creativity, literature, writers

27 likes

#30

“The season was waning fast
Our nights were growing cold at last
I 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.”
― Roman Payne

tags: bed, cold, fear, killing, love, nocturne, passion, payne, poetry, ration, roman, romantic, silk, sleeping, sleeping-pill, winter

45 likes

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