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… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
“When I was young” … “Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus,… — Paul Bowles Copy Share
A black star appears, a point of darkness in the night sky's clarity. Point of darkness and gateway to repose. Reach out, pierce the… — Paul Bowles Copy Share
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,… — Paul Bowles Copy Share
Everyone is isolated from everyone else. The concept of society is like a cushion to protect us from the knowledge of that isolation. A… — Paul Bowles Copy Share
Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary. — Paul Bowles Copy Share
“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… — Paul Bowles Copy Share
“... how could any young man merely sit back and wait for divine justice to take its course? It was asking the impossible.” — Paul Bowles Copy Share
“There could be nothing, he reflected, to equal a government which was simply the honest enforcement, by means of the sword, of the laws… — Paul Bowles Copy Share
Not all the ravages caused by our merciless age are tangible ones. The subtler forms of destruction, those involving only the human spirit, are… — Paul Bowles Copy Share
“What a wonderful thing to be an American!" he said impetuously. "Yes," said Dyar automatically, never having given much thought to what it would… — Paul Bowles Copy Share
“How peaceful it was, with the light evening breeze stirring the small leaves of the grapevine that clustered around the electric bulb, making the… — Paul Bowles Copy Share
“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… — Paul Bowles Copy Share
“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… — Paul Bowles Copy Share
“Scene VI (1940) It is our fault we love only the skull of Beauty Without knowing who she was, of what she died. We… — Paul Bowles Copy Share
