Jerzy Kosinski Quotes

“The principle of art is to pause, not bypass.”

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

“You don't die in the United States you underachieve.”

“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.”

“The principle of art is to pause, not bypass. The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke. This requires a moment of pause--a contract with yourself through the object you look at or the page you read. In that moment of pause, I think life expands. And really the purpose of art--for me, of 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. That is the moment of finding something which you have not known about yourself, or your environment, about others and about life.”

“I wasnt political in order to be political”

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

“The first requisite for immortality is death.”

“You must first have a lot of patience to learn to have patience.”

“Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.”