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… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
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,… — 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
