Jerzy Kosinski Quotes - Page 2

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.

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.

[Nabokov's] language is made visible . . . like a veil or transparent curtain. You cannot help seeing the curtain as you peek into the intimate rooms behind.

Photography was the first foreign language of my artistic expression.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

Physical comfort has nothing to do with any other comfort.

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

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

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

The popular culture says . . . Do what you do, your life is predestined, like the installment plan on your house. There's not much you can do about it. Make your payments, live it, get sick, die, don't make any trouble. It is the Master Charge of destiny. Try to get your high credit rating.

All my life I've been hiding.

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.

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

All my father saw was what he wanted to see.