Paul Bowles Quotes

You know, everyone here's got some little peccadillo he's hoping to hide.

Only then did he understand that he really wanted to know nothing about El Ga’a beyond the fact that it was isolated and unfrequented, that it was precisely those things he had been trying to ascertain about it.

alone in his struggle to bring the truth to its people. He consoled himself by recalling that it is only in each man’s own consciousness that the isolation exists; objectively man is always a part of something.

When they had gone the Moungari fell silent, to wait through the cold hours for the sun that would bring first warmth, then heat, thirst, fire, visions. The next night he did not know where he was, did not feel the cold. The wind blew dust along the ground into his mouth as he sang.

The man looked at him dispassionately in the gray morning light. With one hand he pinched together the Professor’s nostrils. When the Professor opened his mouth to breathe, the man swiftly seized his tongue and pulled on it with all his might. The Professor was gagging and catching his breath; he did not see what was happening. He could not distinguish the pain of the brutal yanking from that of the sharp knife. Then there was an endless choking and spitting that went on automatically, as though he were scarcely a part of it.

He was somewhere, he had come back through the vast regions from nowhere; there was the certitude of an infinite sadness at the core of his consciousness, but the sadness was reassuring, because it alone was familiar.

Frightfulness is never more than an unfamiliar pattern.

"There's a little war in progress here. There won't be anything left of the place if it goes on at this rate." (But it's hard to feign innocence if you've eaten the apple, he reflected.) "And it looks to me as if it is going to go on, because the French aren't going to give in, and certainly the Arabs aren't, because they can't. They're fighting with their backs the the wall."

"I thought maybe you meant you expected a new world war," he lied.

"That's the least of my worries. When that comes, we've had it. You can't sit around mooning about Judgement Day. That's just silly. Everybody who ever lived has always had his own private Judgment Day to face anyway, and he still has. As far as that goes, nothing's changed at all."

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. Do you understand?

What words are there to tell how long a night can be?

There have been times, what with this and that,
when the whisper of words was not enough.
On some shelf of memory lies a misplaced summer,
one not stored away for later savoring.
Surely it ended early, with unexpected fogs,
with the wind sliding past through unmeasured darkness.
No voice could be enough, what with this and that,
and the hours falling faster.

Ogniqualvolta si trovava in viaggio da un luogo all'altro, era in grado di valutare la propria vita con un po' più di obiettività del solito. Spesso, proprio durante un viaggio i suoi pensieri divenivano particolarmente lucidi, e prendeva decisioni cui non poteva arrivare quand'era fermo in un luogo.

"Polly belonged wholly to her time. Alert to its defects and dangers, she nevertheless had reached what she herself called an "adjustment," and she was very firm in her belief that without the attainment of a state of conscious harmony with the society in which he functioned, no individual could hope to accomplish much of anything"

The odious little dogs that French people seemed to like so much rushed out at him as he rode by, barking furiously.

It seems to me that if one could accept existence as it is, partake of it fully, the world could be magical. The cricket on my balcony at the moment piercing the night repeatedly with its hurried needle of sound, would be welcome merely because it is there, rather than an annoyance because it distracts me from what I am trying to do.