1.
In my photographs it is apparent that there was no posing at the moment I released the shutter.
Jerzy Kosinski
2.
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
3.
Life is a state of mind.
Jerzy Kosinski
4.
Going around under an umbrella interferes with one's looking up at the sky.
Jerzy Kosinski
5.
The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.
Jerzy Kosinski
6.
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
7.
I do not gather things, I prefer to rent them rather than to possess them.
Jerzy Kosinski
8.
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
9.
Persons who have been homeless carry within them a certain philosophy of life which makes them apprehensive about ownership.
Jerzy Kosinski
10.
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
11.
I always have a sense of trembling, but so does a compass, after all.
Jerzy Kosinski
12.
Like nature, our economic system remains, in the long run, stable and rational...We welcome the inevitable seasons of our economy! How foolish of us.
Jerzy Kosinski
13.
Travel gives me the opportunity to walk through the sectors of cities where one can clearly see the passage of time.
Jerzy Kosinski
14.
Take a look at the books other people have in their homes.
Jerzy Kosinski
15.
Take whatever you can from others, and when there is nothing left, forget about them.
Jerzy Kosinski
16.
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
17.
You don't die in the United States, you underachieve.
Jerzy Kosinski
18.
The principle of art is to pause, not bypass.
Jerzy Kosinski
19.
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
20.
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
21.
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.
Jerzy Kosinski
22.
When people claim to know who I am, I can no longer act freely.
Jerzy Kosinski
23.
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
24.
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
25.
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
26.
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
27.
It seems that what I really want is a drug that will increase my consciousness of others, not myself.
Jerzy Kosinski
28.
I look back into past history, the stored experiences or products of the imagination. I look no further forward than the evening.
Jerzy Kosinski
29.
A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.
Jerzy Kosinski
30.
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
31.
I collect human relationships very much the way others collect fine art.
Jerzy Kosinski
32.
It is possible to stand around with a cocktail in one's hand and talk with everyone, which means with no one.
Jerzy Kosinski
33.
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
34.
- 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
35.
There must be no worse punishment to a totalitarian nation than the withdrawal of capital.
Jerzy Kosinski
36.
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
37.
I am curious about grownups, not children.
Jerzy Kosinski
38.
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
39.
I am going to put myself to sleep now for a bit longer than usual. Call it Eternity
Jerzy Kosinski
40.
All my life I've been hiding.
Jerzy Kosinski
41.
I am inspired by human sexuality. The act itself is mechanical and holds little interest to me.
Jerzy Kosinski
42.
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
43.
The things I write are for those who are willing to accept a new relationship between the reader and the author.
Jerzy Kosinski
44.
Photography was the first foreign language of my artistic expression.
Jerzy Kosinski
45.
Can the imagination, any more than the boy, be held prisoner ?" - from the foreword to the 1976 edition of "The Painted Bird
Jerzy Kosinski
46.
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
47.
All my father saw was what he wanted to see.
Jerzy Kosinski
48.
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
49.
[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.
Jerzy Kosinski
50.
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 Kosinski