Jerzy Kosinski Quotes

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

- 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

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

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

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

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

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

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

The principle of art is to pause, not bypass.

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

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

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

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

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

- Jerzy Kosinski

Physical comfort has nothing to do with any other comfort.

- Jerzy Kosinski