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fe732bb Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, 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 remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so de.. Paul Bowles
c4c7afa How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's 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 twenty. And yet it all seems limitless. Paul Bowles
e24f354 How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small. humanity life Paul Bowles
6e6b73e The soul is the weariest part of the body. Paul Bowles
4bfed3d 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
54e2715 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
d0f1ca9 She was saved from prettiness by the intensity of her gaze. Paul Bowles
e886262 Immediately when you arrive in Sahara, for the first or the tenth time, you notice the stillness. An incredible, absolute silence prevails outside the towns; and within, even in busy places like the markets, there is a hushed quality in the air, as if the quiet were a conscious force which, resenting the intrusion of sound, minimizes and disperses sound straightaway. Then there is the sky, compared to which all other skies seem fainthearted.. Paul Bowles
50f4e55 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.. life life-and-death Paul Bowles
6171601 There is a way to master silence Control its curves, inhabit its dark corners Paul Bowles
4637559 Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary. Paul Bowles
bb5ce8b 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
b840d27 Because neither she nor Port had ever lived a life of any kind of regularity, they had both made the fatal error of coming hazily to regard time as non-existent. One year was like another year. Eventually everything would happen. time Paul Bowles
ed21cf5 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. Paul Bowles
375929b 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. Paul Bowles
3024c4d 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. Paul Bowles
585fc4a One never took the time to savour the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and fatal, that there never would be a return, another time. Paul Bowles
aaa20a2 Someone once had said to her that the sky hides the night behind it, shelters the person beneath from the horror that lies above. Unblinking, she fixed the solid emptiness, and the anguish began to move in her. At any moment the rip can occur, the edges fly back, and the giant maw will be revealed. Paul Bowles
70d2123 If people are living the same as always, with their bellies full of food, they'll just go on the same way. If they get hungry and unhappy enough, something happens. Paul Bowles
fd76613 Whenever he was en route from one place to another, he was able to look at his life with a little more objectivity than usual. it was often on trpis that he thought most clearly, and made the decisions that he could not reach when he was stationary. Paul Bowles
86dadf4 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 an.. Paul Bowles
c5a962c before there can be change there must be discontent. discontent Paul Bowles
9068261 the sky here's very strange. I often have the sensation when I look at it that it's a solid thing up there, protecting us from what's behind . . . [from] nothing, I suppose. Just darkness. Absolute night. Paul Bowles
633e638 Once you accept the fact that life isn't fun, you'll be much happier," his mother said to him." Paul Bowles
c96bc91 Whoever invented the concept of fairness, anyway? Isn't everything easier if you simply get rid of the idea of justice altogether? You think the quantity of pleasure, the degree of suffering is constant among all men? Paul Bowles
b6ecfb8 How peaceful it was, with the light evening breeze stirring the small leaves of the grapevine that clustered around the electric bulb, making the shadows move and change on the yellow mat below. For a moment he pushed aside the thought of money. From time to time the dark water beside them rippled audibly, as if a tiny fish had come to the surface for an instant and then darted beneath. It was in peaceful moments such as this, his father ha.. yearning Paul Bowles
7eb7c5e The desert landscape is always at its best in the half-light of dawn or dusk. The sense of distance lacks: a ridge nearby can be a far-off mountain range, each small detail can take on the importance of a major variant on the countryside's repetitious theme. The coming of day promises a change; it is only when the day had fully arrived that the watcher suspects it is the same day returned once again--the same day he has been living for a lo.. Paul Bowles
c98f9fa He did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler. The difference is partly one of time, he would explain. 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. Paul Bowles
f201328 Many days later another caravan was passing and a man saw something on top of the highest dune there. And when they went up to see, they found Outka, Mimouna and Aicha; they were still there, lying the same way as when they had gone to sleep. And all three of the glasses,' he held up his own little tea glass, 'were full of sand. That was how they had their tea in the Sahara. Paul Bowles
1f59cd6 If you could not have freedom you could still have vengeance. Paul Bowles
5db0634 I have the feeling you are primarily two people,one of which should be killed. Paul Bowles
e2b8b4b 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." Paul Bowles
84b274e It made her sad to realise that in spite of their so often having the same reactions, the same feelings, they never would reach the same conclusions, because their respective aims in life were almost diametrically opposed. Paul Bowles
0990ed6 Death is always on its way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life....we get to think of life as an inexhaustable well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times...How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet is all seems limitless. Paul Bowles
cef13fe One of these days the future will be here, and you won't be ready for it. Paul Bowles
dbd00db These were the first moments of a new existence, a strange one in which she already glimpsed the element of timelessness that would surround her. The person who frantically has been counting the seconds on his way to catch a train, and arrives panting just as it disappears, knowing the next one is not due for many hours, feels something of the same sudden surfeit of time, the momentary sensation of drowning in an element become too rich and.. Paul Bowles
98c6259 That was what he wanted, to be baked dry and hard, to feel the vaporous worries evaporating one by one, to know finally that all the damp little doubts and hesitations that covered the floor of his being were curling up and expiring in the great furnace-blast of the sun. Paul Bowles
b59c1c7 He did not look up because he knew how senseless the landscape would appear. It takes energy to invest life with meaning, and at present this energy was lacking. He knew how things could stand bare, their essence having retreated on all sides to beyond the horizon, as if impelled by a sinister centrifugal force. Paul Bowles
f491c02 Each Whining Thing (1929) When striped snakes shall creep upon us And the nervous screams of birds Make silent all the fountains and the orchards and when these Have caught upon the wing each wing That flutters from the sky Then shall I and then shall I Rip out the smiles from garden walks Transform the minnows into hawks Tarantulas and bees Then shall I and then shall I Unmake each whining thing. Paul Bowles
4a9a267 There's something repulsive about an American without money in his pocket. Paul Bowles
c1a5b12 He could not feel at ease with gourmets and hedonists; they were a hostile species. hedonists Paul Bowles
1970775 When I first came here it was a pure country. There was music and dancing and magic every day in the streets. "Now it's finished, everything. Even the religion. In a few more years the whole country will be like all the other Moslem countries, just a huge European slum, full of poverty and hatred." Paul Bowles
d1315df How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless. Paul Bowles
f918e9b and its derivatives are strictly prohibited in Turkey, and the natural correlative of this proscription is that alcohol, far from being frowned upon as it is in other Moslem lands, is freely drunk; being a government monopoly it can be bought at any cigarette counter. This fact is no mere detail; it is of primary social importance, since the psychological effects of the two substances are diametrically opposed to each other. Alcohol blurs t.. cannabis east-versus-west weed Paul Bowles
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