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

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.

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

...he refused to consider the Moroccans' present culture, however decadent, an established fact, an existing thing. Instead, he seemed to believe that it was something accidentally left over from bygone centuries, now in a necessary state of transition, that the people needed temporary guidance in order to progress to some better condition.