“It is growing cold. Winter is putting footsteps in the meadow. What whiteness boasts that sun that comes into this wood! One would say milk-colored maidens are dancing on the petals of orchids. How coldly burns our sun! One would say its rays of light are shards of snow; one imagines the sun lives upon a snow-crested peak on this day. One would say she is a woman who wears a gown of winter frost that blinds the eyes. Helplessness has weakened me. Wandering has wearied my legs.”
"Ô, Wanderess, Wanderess When did you feel your most euphoric kiss? Was I the source of your greatest bliss?"
- Roman Payne
Love
"We made love outdoors—without a roof, I like most, without stove, my favorite place, assuming the weather be fair and balmy, and the earth beneath be clean. Our souls intertwined and dripping with dew, and our love for each other was seen. Our love for the world was new."
- Roman Payne
Love
"She is free in her wildness; she is a wanderess, a drop of free water. She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs. Time for her isn't something to fight against. Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water."
- Roman Payne
Self-awareness
"I wandered everywhere, through cities and countries wide. And everywhere I went, the world was on my side."
- Roman Payne
Aspirations
"Never did the world make a queen of a girl who hides in houses and dreams without traveling."
- Roman Payne
Ambition
"Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful."
- Joshua J. Marine
Adversity
"The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it."
- Epicurus
Adversity
"It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness."
- Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Adversity
"The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that’s where it’s at."
- Jesse Owens
Adversity
"If there is no struggle, there is no progress."
- Frederick Douglass
Adversity