Jerzy Kosinski Quotes

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Physical comfort has nothing to do with any other comfort.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.