Top 50 Jerzy Kosiński Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Life is a state of mind.”

— Jerzy Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

3. “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 Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

5. “Going around under an umbrella interferes with one’s looking up at the sky.”

— Jerzy Kosiński

6. “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 Kosiński

7. “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 Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

9. “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 Kosiński

10. “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 Kosiński

11. “I always have a sense of trembling, but so does a compass, after all.”

— Jerzy Kosiński

12. “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 Kosiński

13. “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 Kosiński

14. “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 Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

16. “All my life I’ve been hiding.”

— Jerzy Kosiński

17. “I was pushing myself to extremes in order to discover my many selves.”

— Jerzy Kosiński

18. “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 Kosiński

19. “Physical comfort has nothing to do with any other comfort.”

— Jerzy Kosiński

20. “Wouldn’t it be easier to change people’s eyes and hair than to build big furnaces and then catch Jews and Gypsies to burn them?”

— Jerzy Kosiński

21. “It seems that what I really want is a drug that will increase my consciousness of others, not myself.”

— Jerzy Kosiński

22. “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 Kosiński

23. “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 Kosiński

24. “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 Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

26. “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 Kosiński

27. “Photography was the first foreign language of my artistic expression.”

— Jerzy Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

29. “I am curious about grownups, not children.”

— Jerzy Kosiński

30. “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 Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

32. “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 Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

36. “People say, “Well, you went on television, it enlarged your readership.” It did not at all, not at all. I might as well tell you, I lost some readership, because the profound audience felt somehow bothered by my too easy manner.”

— Jerzy Kosiński

37. “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 Kosiński

38. “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 Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

42. “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 Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

44. “You don’t die in the United States, you underachieve.”

— Jerzy Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

46. “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 Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński

48. “All my father saw was what he wanted to see.”

— Jerzy Kosiński

49. “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 Kosiński

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

— Jerzy Kosiński