Paul Bowles Quotes

• Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.

  Paul Bowles

  Life, Death, Time

  "The Sheltering Sky". Book by Paul Bowles, 1949.

  92 Copy quote

• I've always wanted to get as far as possible from the place where I was born. Far both geographically and spiritually. To leave it behind ... I feel that life is very short and the world is there to see and one should know as much about it as possible. One belongs to the whole world, not just one part of it.

  Paul Bowles

  Life Is Too Short, Life Is Short, World

  Paul Bowles, Gena Dagel Caponi (1993). “Conversations with Paul Bowles”, p.90, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  88 Copy quote

• The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it's having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels.

  Paul Bowles

  Jewels, Perfect, Moments

  Paul Bowles (1955). “The Spider's House”

  76 Copy quote

• Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. Indeed, he would have found it difficult to tell, among the many places he had lived, precisely where it was he had felt most at home.

  Paul Bowles

  Moving, Home, Years

  Paul Bowles (2011). “The Sheltering Sky”, p.6, Harper Collins

  50 Copy quote

• How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small.

  Paul Bowles

  Dark, Sky, Behinds

  46 Copy quote

• Life is lived only once. And the less seriously the better.

  Paul Bowles

  Life Is

  36 Copy quote

• The only effort worth making is the one it takes to learn the geography of one's own nature.

  Paul Bowles

  Effort, Geography

  23 Copy quote

• Everyone is isolated from everyone else. The concept of society is like a cushion to protect us from the knowledge of that isolation. A fiction that serves as an anesthetic.

  Paul Bowles

  Fiction, Isolation, Protect

  Paul Bowles, Gena Dagel Caponi (1993). “Conversations with Paul Bowles”, Univ Pr of Mississippi

  35 Copy quote

• Security is a false God. Begin to make sacrifices to it and you are lost.

  Paul Bowles

  Change, Sacrifice, Lost

  Paul Bowles (2016). “Their Heads Are Green And Their Hands Are Blue”, p.74, Pickle Partners Publishing

  29 Copy quote

• Each time I go to a place I have not seen before I hope it will be as different as possible from the places I already know. I assume it is natural for a traveler to seek diversity, and that it is the human element that makes him most aware of difference. If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another.

  Paul Bowles

  Moving, Differences, People

  Paul Bowles (2016). “Their Heads Are Green And Their Hands Are Blue”, p.5, Pickle Partners Publishing

  17 Copy quote

• The sky hides the night behind it and shelters the people beneath from the horror that lies above.

  Paul Bowles

  Lying, Night, Sky

  34 Copy quote

• You will find yourself among people. There is no help for this nor should you want it otherwise. The passages where no one waits are dark and hard to navigate. The wet walls touch your shoulders on each side. When the trees were there I cared that they were there. And now they are gone, does it matter? The passages where no one waits go on and give no promise of an end. You will find yourself among people, Faces, clothing, teeth and hair and words, and many words When there was life, I said that life was wrong. What do I say now? You understand?

  Paul Bowles

  Wall, Dark, Hair

  Paul Bowles (1994). “The Portable Paul and Jane Bowles”, Penguin Group USA

  27 Copy quote

• The soul is the weariest part of the body.

  Paul Bowles

  Soul, Body, Parts Of The Body

  Paul Bowles (2002). “The Sheltering Sky: Let it Come Down ; The Spider's House”

  8 Copy quote

• Since the world began has any man ever been able to know what would happen tomorrow? The world of men is today. I'm asking you to open your heart today. Tomorrow belongs to Allah.

  Paul Bowles

  Heart, Men, Asking

  Paul Bowles (1955). “The Spider's House”

  18 Copy quote

• A black star appears, a point of darkness in the night sky's clarity. Point of darkness and gateway to repose. Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose.

  Paul Bowles

  Stars, Night, Sky

  Paul Bowles (2002). “The Sheltering Sky: Let it Come Down ; The Spider's House”

  31 Copy quote

• [A]nother important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.

  Paul Bowles

  Civilization, Differences, Important

  Paul Bowles (2000). “The Paul Bowles reader”

  9 Copy quote

• No one can ever heap enough insults upon me to suit my taste. I think we all really thrive on hostility, because it's the most intense kind of massage the ego can undergo. Other people's indifference is the only horror.

  Paul Bowles

  Thinking, People, Ego

  Paul Bowles, Jeffrey Miller (2014). “In Touch: The Letters of Paul Bowles”, p.192, Macmillan

  16 Copy quote

• If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another.

  Paul Bowles

  Moving, People, Ifs

  Paul Bowles (2016). “Their Heads Are Green And Their Hands Are Blue”, p.5, Pickle Partners Publishing

  20 Copy quote

• It's very hard to write about that which is always beautiful and pleasant and good. You don't get anywhere with it. There's no friction in it. There's no trouble. You have to have trouble. Somebody's got to get in trouble, or no one wants to read it.

  Paul Bowles

  Beautiful, Writing, Want

  27 Copy quote

• She was saved from prettiness by the intensity of her gaze.

  Paul Bowles

  Intensity, Prettiness, Saved

  Paul Bowles (2011). “The Sheltering Sky”, p.7, Harper Collins

  23 Copy quote

• If you don't know why you like a thing, it is usually worth your while to attempt to find out.

  Paul Bowles

  Knows, Ifs

  6 Copy quote

• Although I knew enough Freud to believe that the sex urge was an important mainspring of life, it still seemed to me that any conscious manifestation of sex was necessarily ludicrous. Defecation and copulation were two activities which made a human being totally ridiculous. At least the former could be conducted in private, but the latter by definition demanded a partner. I discovered, though, that whenever I ventured this opinion, people took it as a joke.

  Paul Bowles

  Sex, Believe, Two

  22 Copy quote

• Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary.

  Paul Bowles

  Men, Hegemony, Sickness

  Paul Bowles (2002). “The Sheltering Sky: Let it Come Down ; The Spider's House”

  24 Copy quote

• It's unnecessary and destructive to think of oneself at all. People ask me, 'What do you think of yourself as?' My answer is, 'Nothing.

  Paul Bowles

  Thinking, People, Ego

  15 Copy quote

• Not all the ravages caused by our merciless age are tangible ones. The subtler forms of destruction, those involving only the human spirit, are the most to be dreaded.

  Paul Bowles

  Age, Tangible, Spirit

  Paul Bowles (1955). “The Spider's House”

  6 Copy quote

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