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32032df
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The bar was stuffy and melancholy. It was full of the sadness inherent in all deracinated things.
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Paul Bowles |
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5fc605d
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After all, the English are really too much. One can't live in that constipated fashion forever.
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Paul Bowles |
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2e08b7b
|
It's a madhouse, of course. A complete, utter madhouse. I only hope to God it remains one.
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Paul Bowles |
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ab8b39a
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Tangier is more New York than New York. ... Then you must see how alike the two places are. The life revolves wholly about the making of money. Practically everyone is dishonest. In New York you have Wall Street, here you have the Bourse. ... In New York you have the slick financiers, here the money changers. In New York you have your racketeers. Here you have your smugglers. And you have every nationality and no civic pride.
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tangier
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Paul Bowles |
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0b6e481
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Although this was not a comforting point of view, he did not reject it, because it coincided with one of his basic beliefs: that a man must at all costs keep some part of himself outside and beyond life. If he should ever for an instant cease doubting, accept wholly the truth of what his senses conveyed to him, he would be dislodged from the solid ground to which he clung and swept along with the current, having lost all objective sense, to..
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existence
truth
immersion
morocco
senses
objectivity
subjectivity
outsider
stranger
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Paul Bowles |
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75b79cf
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The idea that at each successive moment he was deeper into the Sahara than he had been the moment before, that he was leaving behind all familiar things, this constant consideration kept him in a state of pleasurable agitation.
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Paul Bowles |
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3e04e73
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Writing is harmless, and it keeps me in dinners and out of trouble.
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Paul Bowles |
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2a61271
|
In reality the gatherings were held in order to entertain these few Moslem guests, to whom the unaccountable behavior of Europeans never ceased to be a fascinating spectacle. Most of the Europeans, of course, thought the Moslem gentlemen were invited to add local color.
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Paul Bowles |
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60e8384
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And it occurred to him that a walk through the countryside was a sort of epitome of the passage through life itself. One never took the time to savor the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and final, that there never would be a return, another time.
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Paul Bowles |
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b9f96f0
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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.
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Paul Bowles |
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06f6e5b
|
Fiction should always steer clear of political considerations.
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politics
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Paul Bowles |
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5884081
|
In the school they teach you what the world means, and once you have learned, you will always know," Amar's father had told him. "But suppose the world changes?" Amar had thought. "Then what would you know?"
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Paul Bowles |
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abe02f3
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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 ...
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faith
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Paul Bowles |
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0c4dbe5
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Sunset is such a sad hour," she said, presently. "If I watch the end of a day--any day--I always feel it's the end of a whole epoch. And the autumn! It might as well be the end of everything," he said. "That's why I hate cold countries, and love the warm ones, where there's no winter, and when night comes you feel an opening up of the life there, instead of a closing down. Don't you feel that?"
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Paul Bowles |
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b30706d
|
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 t..
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sex
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Paul Bowles |
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b8f6ea2
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You can't discipline the whole country." "Still," Moss said dreamily, "that's what must be done before they can ever accomplish anything."
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Paul Bowles |
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21f9722
|
Having arrived at this point, he had found no direction in which to go save that of further withdrawal into a subjectivity which refused existence to any reality or law but its own. During these postwar years he had lived in solitude and carefully planned ignorance of what was happening in the world. Nothing had importance save the exquisitely isolated cosmos of his own consciousness. Then little by little he had had the impression that the..
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solitude
existence
meaning
ennui
postwar
meaninglessness
modernism
subjectivity
isolation
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Paul Bowles |
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33987b0
|
May Allah bless you." Or had she said: "May Allah burn you?" He was not sure which: the two Arabic words sounded so much alike."
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Paul Bowles |
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49cddfe
|
The Americans are the nature of the future," she would announce in her hearty voice. "Here's to 'em. God bless their gadgets, great and small, God bless Frigidaire, Tampax and Coca-Cola. Yes, even Coca-Cola,darling." (It was generally conceded that Coca-Cola's advertising was ruining the picturesqueness of Morocco.)" --
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Paul Bowles |
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11f013d
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a man could scarcely make his writing a reason for living unless he believed in the validity of that writing.
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writing
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Paul Bowles |
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c0dc32d
|
Everything's explained by the constant intervention of Allah. And whatever happens had to happen, and was decreed at the beginning of time, and there's no way of even imagining how anything could have been different from what it is.
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Paul Bowles |
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1f9c4d4
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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 tastes wonderful, and you don't even think of its ever being used up. Then..
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Paul Bowles |
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9944ae0
|
I think that's the point of view of an outsider, a tourist who puts picturesqueness above everything else.
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Paul Bowles |
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11b5f1b
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It was such places as this, such moments that he loved above all else in life; she knew that, and she also knew that he loved them more if she could be there to experience them with him. And although he was aware that the very silences and emptinesses that touched his soul terrified her, he could not bear to be reminded of that. It was as if always he held the fresh hope that she, too, would be touched in the same way as he by solitude and ..
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Paul Bowles |
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693685a
|
He doesn't know what the world is like today." The thought that his own conception of the world was so different from his father's was like a protecting wall around his entire being. When his father went out into the street he had only the mosque, the Koran, the other old men in his mind. It was the immutable world of law, the written word, unchanging beneficence, but it was in some way wrinkled and dried up. Whereas when Amar stepped out t..
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Paul Bowles |
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0a5e2ba
|
He knew it was necessary to drive the French out, but he had always imagined that this would be done gloriously, with thousands of men on horseback flashing their swords and calling upon Allah to aid them in their holy mission ... It was hard to see any connection between the splendid war of liberation and all this whispering and frowning.
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Paul Bowles |
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49ab112
|
You know what?" he said with great earnestness. "I think we're both afraid of the same thing. And for the same reason. 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. Isn't that true?"
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Paul Bowles |
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d8be8a9
|
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."
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Paul Bowles |
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66e5e4b
|
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.
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Paul Bowles |
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90b57db
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Even the smallest measure of time is greater than the greatest measure of space. Or is that a lie? Does it only seem so to us, because we can never get it back?
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Paul Bowles |
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be5f87f
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But there was never any knowing or any certitude; the time to come always had more than one possible direction. One could not even give up hope. The wind would blow, the sand would settle, and in some as yet unforeseen manner time would bring about a change which could only be terrifying, since it would not be a continuation of the present.
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french-north-africa
post-colonialism
tags-existentialism
travel-novel
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Paul Bowles |
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b4ea248
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Since Thami had the Arab's utter incomprehension of the meaning of pornography, he imagined that the police had placed the ban on obscene films because these infringed upon Christian doctrine at certain specific points, in which case any Christian might be expected to show interest, if only to disapprove.
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pornography
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Paul Bowles |
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2c4ae73
|
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.
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transition
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Paul Bowles |
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79045e0
|
The key question, it seemed to him, was that of whether man was to obey Nature, or attempt to command her.
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nature
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Paul Bowles |
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bd43f88
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But don't we all like to be overpowered, one time or another.
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Paul Bowles |
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2e6a2de
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The difference was principally in the invisible places toward which their respective hearts were turned. They dreamed of Cairo with its autonomous government, its army, its newspapers and its cinema, while he, facing in the same direction, dreamed just a little beyond Cairo, across the Bhar El Hamar to Mecca. They thought in terms of grievances, censorship, petitions and reforms; he, like any good Moslem who knows only the tenets of his rel..
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makkah
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Paul Bowles |
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bc5870e
|
Scene VI (1940) It is our fault we love only the skull of Beauty Without knowing who she was, of what she died. We have the thief's guilt, but not his booty, The liar's spasm without ever having lied. The sick locust scrapes his injured song, His thorax only partially destroyed. Retching is prohibited. It's wrong. The murderer feels no hate he can avoid. Now flies bite worst where the skin is broken. Illness triumphs. Lesions. Soon tumors s..
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Paul Bowles |
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73b9e3e
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Pozhalui, ogromnoe razlichie sostoialo v tom, chto Zapad okazyvalsia gumannee: on predusmatrival dlia svoikh patsientov anesteziiu, v to vremia kak Vostok, prinimaia stradanie kak nechto samo soboi razumeeshchesia, ustremlialsia navtrechu griadushchemu koshmaru s predel'nym ravnodushiem k boli.
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Paul Bowles |
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4c481f6
|
If she could only give up, relax, and live in the perfect knowledge that there was no hope.
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Paul Bowles |
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dbb29cb
|
These empty days. How do you spend them?
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Paul Bowles |
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00a9cee
|
And yet always you feel as though you understood perfectly the people and why they do everything as they do.Still you are absolutely severed from them.
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Paul Bowles |
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9491b71
|
his behavior there was a perfect balance between gentleness and violence that gave her particular delight.
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Paul Bowles |
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859176e
|
It was one of the charms of the International Zone that you could get anything you wanted if you paid for it. Do anything, too, for that matter; - there were no incorruptibles. It was only a question of price.
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Paul Bowles |
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a03a624
|
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.
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Paul Bowles |