Jerzy Kosinski famous quotes

Here was one place where I could find out who I was and what I was going to become. And that was the public library.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Library #Public Library

Life is a state of mind.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Life #Mind #States

The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Art #Creative #Principles

Going around under an umbrella interferes with one's looking up at the sky.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Nature #Sky #Umbrella

And really the purpose of art - for me, fiction - is to alert, to indicate to stop, to say: Make certain that when you rush through you will not miss the moment which you might have had, or might still have.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Missing You #Art #Purpose

The principle of art is to pause, not bypass.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Art #Principles #Bypass

Travel gives me the opportunity to walk through the sectors of cities where one can clearly see the passage of time.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Opportunity #Cities #Giving

Persons who have been homeless carry within them a certain philosophy of life which makes them apprehensive about ownership.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Philosophy #Homeless #Ownership

Mapplethorpe presented the body as a sexual object, separating it from the humanity of the person. He added nothing to photography as a medium. I hold his work in low regard.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Photography #Humanity #Body

Chance was to work in the garden, where he would care for plants and grasses and trees which grew there peacefully. He would be as one on them: quiet, open hearted in the sunshine and heavy when it rained.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Sunshine #Garden #Compassion

I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Country #Character #Waste

The things I write are for those who are willing to accept a new relationship between the reader and the author.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Writing #New Relationship #Accepting

Physical comfort has nothing to do with any other comfort.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Comfort #Physical Attraction #Attraction

I am inspired by human sexuality. The act itself is mechanical and holds little interest to me.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Littles #Inspired #Sexuality

I suppress in my prose any language which calls attention to itself.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Writing #Attention #Language

There must be no worse punishment to a totalitarian nation than the withdrawal of capital.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Punishment #Withdrawal

As I go to sleep I remember what my father said-that one can never be sure if one will awake. The way my health is now, this is becoming more and more real.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Father #Real #Sleep

I do like to live in other people's homes. I enjoy being a guest. I am an inexpensive guest. When one lives in another's home he can enter into the psychic kingdom of that person.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Home #Psychics #People

I look back into past history, the stored experiences or products of the imagination. I look no further forward than the evening.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Past #Imagination #Looks

My choice of a life of adventure may well have been a result of the fact that action raised my blood pressure giving me enough energy to live.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Adventure #Blood #Giving

Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer's life.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Loneliness #Being Alone #Gathering

Lovers are not snails; they don't have to protrude from their shells and meet each other halfway. Meet me within your own self.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Self #Shells #Lovers

Banks introduced the installment plan. The disappearance of cash and the coming of the credit card changed the shape of life in the United States.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#America #Shapes #Cash

In London, the weather would affect me negatively. I react strongly to light. If it is cloudy and raining, there are clouds and rain in my soul.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Rain #Clouds #Light

I collect human relationships very much the way others collect fine art.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Art #Way #Fine

In my photographs it is apparent that there was no posing at the moment I released the shutter.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Literature #Moments #Photograph

I do not gather things, I prefer to rent them rather than to possess them.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

The planned sit-down reception is an artificial forum where one is presented with a limited number of persons with whom he can hold a conversation.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Numbers #Literature #Forums

I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Sleep #Usual #Eternity

It seems that what I really want is a drug that will increase my consciousness of others, not myself.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Drug #Want #Consciousness

There's a place beyond words where experience first occurs to which I always want to return. I suspect that whenever I articulate my thoughts or translate my impulses into words, I am betraying the real thoughts and impulses which remain hidden.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Real #Return #Want

- Growth has its season. There are spring and summer, but there are also fall and winter. And then spring and summer again. As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all be well.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Summer #Spring #Fall

I was pushing myself to extremes in order to discover my many selves.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Self #Order #Pushing

When people claim to know who I am, I can no longer act freely.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Who I Am #People #Claims

I always have a sense of trembling, but so does a compass, after all.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Fear #Doe #Compass

Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner ?" - from the foreword to the 1976 edition of "The Painted Bird
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Boys #Imagination #Bird

There are many types of participation. One can observe so intensely that one becomes part of the action, but without being an active participant.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Literature #Action #Type

All my father saw was what he wanted to see.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Father #Saws #Wanted

All my life I've been hiding.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Hiding

I am curious about grownups, not children.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Children #Curious #Grownups

It's not that you aren't likable. On the contrary. You are. It's just that one wonders if you haven't made a career out of being so likable.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Careers #Wonder #Made

Take whatever you can from others, and when there is nothing left, forget about them.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Forget

Take a look at the books other people have in their homes.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Book #Home #People

If we reduce social life to the smallest possible unit we will find that there is no social life in the company of one.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Social #Company #Units

A trait which differentiated New York from European cities was the incredible freedom and ease in which life, including sexual life, could be carried on, on many levels.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#New York #Cities #Ease

A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Novelists #Poetic

Homelessness is a part of our American system. There should be nothing wrong with this condition as long as the individual is not sentenced to unnecessary suffering and punishment.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Punishment #Usa #Long

She seemed to belong to that pagan, primitive kingdom of birds and forests where everything was infinitely abundant, wild, blooming, and royal in its perpetual decay, death, and rebirth; illicit and clashing with the human world.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Bird #Blooming #Decay

It is possible to stand around with a cocktail in one's hand and talk with everyone, which means with no one.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Mean #Hands #Cocktails

I don't fret over lost time - I can always use the situations in a novel.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Use #Lost #Situation

I write for a certain sphere of readers in the United States who on average watch seven and a half hours of multichannel television per day.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Writing #Average #United States

It is not sex by itself that interests me, but its particular role in American consciousness, and in my own life.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Sex #Roles #Consciousness

You don't die in the United States, you underachieve.
-- Jerzy Kosinski

#Dying #United States #Death And Dying