No one can ever heap enough insults upon me to suit my taste. I think we all really thrive on hostility, because it's the most intense kind of massage the ego can undergo. Other people's indifference is the only horror. — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
It's unnecessary and destructive to think of oneself at all. People ask me, 'What do you think of yourself as?' My answer is, 'Nothing. — 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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“... 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 Image
“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 Image
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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
“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 Image
