“But there was never any knowing or any certitude; the time to come always had more than one possible direction.” — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
“One of these days the future will be here, and you won't be ready for it.” — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
“Everything's explained by the constant intervention of Allah. And whatever happens had to happen, and was decreed at the beginning of time,… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
“The rest of the world was there for her to take at any moment she wished it, but she always rejected it… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
One never took the time to savour the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day… — 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… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
“The Americans are the nature of the future," she would announce in her hearty voice. "Here's to 'em. God bless their gadgets,… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
Each time I go to a place I have not seen before I hope it will be as different as possible from… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
“Death is always on its way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
“How many times his (Port's) friends, envying him his life, had said to him: "Your life is so simple." "Your life seems… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
“These were the first moments of a new existence, a strange one in which she already glimpsed the element of timelessness that… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
“...Amar was made conscious in an instant of a presence in the air, something which had been there all the time, but… — 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 only… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
“Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless. — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
“the writer: "a spy sent into life by the forces of death. His main objective is to get the information across the… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
Because neither she nor Port had ever lived a life of any kind of regularity, they had both made the fatal error… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
“The idea that at each successive moment he was deeper into the Sahara than he had been the moment before, that he… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
“How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your… — 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… — Paul Bowles Copy Share Image
“Immediately when you arrive in Sahara, for the first or the tenth time, you notice the stillness. An incredible, absolute silence prevails… — 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
