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Author: Paul Bowles
Quotes of Author: Paul Bowles
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  1. Paul Bowles _ The Sheltering Sky

    Tunner's presence created a situation, however slight, which kept him from entering into the reflective state he considered essential.
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  2. Paul Bowles _ The Sheltering Sky

    La humanidad es todos salvo uno mismo. Entonces, ¿Qué interés puede tener para nadie?
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  3. Paul Bowles

    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

  4. Paul Bowles _ The Spider's House

    The key question, it seemed to him, was that of whether man was to obey Nature, or attempt to command her. It had been answered long, long ago, claimed Moss; man's very essence lay in the fact that he had elected to command. But to Stenham that seemed a shallow reply. To him wisdom consisted in the conscious and joyous obedience to natural laws, yet when he had said that to Moss, Moss had laughed pityingly. 'My dear man, wisdom is a primitive concept,' he had told him. 'What we want now is knowledge.' Only great disillusionment could make a man say such a thing, Stenham believed.
    book-quoteknowledgewisdomnature

  5. Paul Bowles _ The Sheltering Sky

    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.
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  6. Paul Bowles _ The Spider's House

    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.
    book-quoterevolutionfrenchindependence

  7. Paul Bowles _ The Sheltering Sky

    Here we say that life is a cliff, and you must never turn around and look back when you're climbing.
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  8. Paul Bowles _ The Spider's House

    The insistent drums were an unwelcome reminder of the existence of another world, wholly autonomous, with its own necessities and patterns. The message they were beating out, over and over, was for her; it was saying, not precisely that she did not exist but rather that it did not matter whether she existed or not, that her presence was of no consequence to the rest of the cosmos. It was a sensation that suddenly paralyzed her with dread. There had never been any question of her "mattering"; it went without saying that she mattered, because she was important to herself. But what was the part of her to which she mattered?
    book-quotemeaning-of-lifeexistentialismsubjectivity

  9. Paul Bowles _ The Sheltering Sky

    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.
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  10. Paul Bowles _ The Spider's House

    Every little thing makes a difference, whether you decide it yourself or whether it's pure accident. So many people have had the whole course of their lives changed by something perfectly simple like, let's say, crossing the street at one point instead of another.""Yes, yes, yes, I know," Stenham said with exaggerated weariness. "As far as I'm concerned that's just as boring, and a lot more false, by the way. The point I'm trying to make is that he loves his world of Koranic law because it's his, and at the same time he hates it because his intuition tells him it's at the end of its rope. He can't expect anything more from it. And our world, he hates that too, just on general principles, and yet it's his only hope, the only way out-if there is one for him personally, which I doubt.
    book-quotecultureway-of-lifekoran

  11. Paul Bowles _ The Stories of Paul Bowles

    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.
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  12. Paul Bowles _ The Sheltering Sky

    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.
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