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 a certain number of times, and a very small number, really...How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

We've never managed, either one of us, to get all the way into life. We're hanging on to the outside for all we're worth, convinced we're going to fall off at the next bump.

It is a dangerous discovery, because they are going to disregard many vital things in their haste to catch up.

Another 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 this liking.

"Once you accept the fact that life isn't fun, you'll be much happier," his mother said to him.

The key question, it seemed to him, was that of whether man was to obey Nature, or attempt to command her.

He awoke, opened his eye. The room meant very little to him; he was too deeply immersed in the non-being from which he had just come. If he had not the energy to ascertain his position in time and space, he also lacked the desire. ... In utter comfort, utter relaxation he lay absolutely still for a while, and then sank back into on the the light momentary sleeps that occur after a long, profound one.

The people of each country get more like the people of every other country. They have no character, no beauty, no ideals, no culture-nothing, nothing.”…
“Everything’s getting gray, and it’ll be grayer.

"At least you can say you were in on the last days of Morocco," he told her. "How's your tea? Finished? I think we ought to be going."

Still, he could not think of the mass of Moroccans without contempt. He had no patience with their ignorance and backwardness; if he damned the Europeans with one breath, he was bound to damn the Moroccans with the next. No one escaped but him, and that was because he hated himself most of all.

Пожалуй, огромное различие состояло в том, что Запад оказывался гуманнее: он предусматривал для своих пациентов анестезию, в то время как Восток, принимая страдание как нечто само собой разумеещеся, устремлялся навтречу грядущему кошмару с предельным равнодушием к боли.

We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well…How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.

When I was young” … “Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus, it would get richer and deeper each year. You kept learning more, getting wiser, having more insight, going further into the truth” – she hesitated.

Port laughed abruptly. – “And now you know it’s not like that. Right? It’s more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tasted wonderful, and you don’t even think of its ever being used up. Then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize it’s nearly burned down to the end. And then’s when you’re conscious of the bitter taste.

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

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.