A large variety of sex clubs were opened from the afternoon to the early morning of every day. Total anonymity was the rule. New York had been a rich source of experiences, some of which later resonated in my prose.
A novelist has a specific poetic license which also applies to his own life.
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.
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.
As a photographer, sociologist, and writer, my interest in Buddhist philosophy served to underline the importance of sex as intellectual inspiration, not just as a source of mental enjoyment.
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.
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.
Being There takes place in Wall Street circles.
Gatherings and, simultaneously, loneliness are the conditions of a writer's life.
Going around under an umbrella interferes with one's looking up at the sky.
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.
I am inspired by human sexuality. The act itself is mechanical and holds little interest to me.
I began with nudes because I was interested in the architecture of the body, and in architecture I was interested in the landscape of war.
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.
I collect human relationships very much the way others collect fine art.
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.
I do not gather things, I prefer to rent them rather than to possess them.
I don't fret over lost time - I can always use the situations in a novel.
I had a very powerful physical argument in favor of writing in English. Using Polish would have localized my novel, giving it certain peculiarities.
I look back into past history, the stored experiences or products of the imagination. I look no further forward than the evening.
I maintained social contact with the Queen and Shah of Iran, both of whom liked my books, especially Being There, which had been translated into Persian.
I must now prove that I even exist.
I need an internal light, as not to fall prey to the things which cause my spirits to sag. This is true water from the heavens.
I often described on television what went on in the sex clubs. I wrote about it with irony.
I showed the privacy of the street, because there we can be alone with ourselves, and no one really looks at us.
I wanted a universal tragedy, not localized by the Polish language, but in Poland.
I was chiefly involved with Latin America and Iran, because it was there that the greatest abuse of human rights occurred.
I was fascinated by sexual motivation and its forms as reflected in writing, film, photography, vaudeville.
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.
If America is to form a global base in Central Europe, then Poland is the best choice-between Russia and Germany.
If it should turn out that I had lost all my assets, then the time I had spent working on the bank would still be remembered as a lot of fun.
If we reduce social life to the smallest possible unit we will find that there is no social life in the company of one.
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.
In my photographs it is apparent that there was no posing at the moment I released the shutter.
In that moment of pause, I think life expands.
It is easy to become socially lazy. One does not feel like going out. Many writers suffer from this. They do not go to receptions, but when they do they are stiff, disinclined to conversation, or are overly nonchalant.
It is not sex by itself that interests me, but its particular role in American consciousness, and in my own life.
It is possible to stand around with a cocktail in one's hand and talk with everyone, which means with no one.
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.
Meeting Mary Weir and our marriage introduced me into banking circles. I grew to understand how steel firms and auto manufacturers exist only because they are financed by banks.
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.
My interests are few, but those that I do have run deep.
One should go into history, into mercantile traditions.
Paris is very comfortable. I could live there. I could also live in Bangkok, even though I do not know the language; from a psychological standpoint, I feel comfortable there.
Persons who have been homeless carry within them a certain philosophy of life which makes them apprehensive about ownership.
Physical comfort has nothing to do with any other comfort.
Take a look at the books other people have in their homes.
That is the moment of finding something which you have not known about yourself, or your environment, about others and about life.
The important factor is eye contact and I contact. It is then understood what the conversation is about; where one person listens to the other with care, then reacts and answers.
The irony of my literary fate, or perhaps the punishment for trying to find a literary universality, depends on the fact that history has opened the doors of Poland.
The last two years, which I have devoted to negotiations over the bank, have wrecked my normal daily life.
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.
The principle of art is to pause, not bypass.
The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.
The things I write are for those who are willing to accept a new relationship between the reader and the author.
The writer would rather travel through the pages of his book, alone at home. But the photographer says, here's an opportunity to take pictures which have not existed before!
There are many types of participation. One can observe so intensely that one becomes part of the action, but without being an active participant.
There is a literature based on travel, and travel literature created by writers. The writer can travel without leaving his chair.
There must be no worse punishment to a totalitarian nation than the withdrawal of capital.
These dictionaries are my intellectual infrastructure. By relocating to a hotel room I am at the mercy of that other space, having only my manuscript.
They looked like a couple of quiet peaceful people, yet the visit to their home gave me a case of goose flesh.
This requires a moment of pause - a contract with yourself through the object you look at or the page you read.
Travel gives me the opportunity to walk through the sectors of cities where one can clearly see the passage of time.
Why not make a provision for people who simply may not be comfortable, or not psychologically or pragmatically equipped, to deal with the state of being rehabilitated?
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