Quotes by Paul Bowles - Page 1

The soul is the weariest part of the body.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Body
Parts Of The Body
Soul
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Life is lived only once. And the less seriously the better.
Paul Bowles / Composer
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She was saved from prettiness by the intensity of her gaze.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Intensity
Prettiness
Saved
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Fiction should always steer clear of political considerations.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Consideration
Fiction
Political
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Every second, ten stars set behind the black water in the west.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Black
Stars
Water
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Publishers are thieves, they are on the other side of the barricade.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Sides
Thieves
Writing
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Security is a false God. Begin to make sacrifices to it and you are lost.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Change
Lost
Sacrifice
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The only effort worth making is the one it takes to learn the geography of one's own nature.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Effort
Geography
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If you don't know why you like a thing, it is usually worth your while to attempt to find out.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Ifs
Knows
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The sky hides the night behind it and shelters the people beneath from the horror that lies above.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Lying
Night
Sky
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The sky hides the night behind it, and shelters the people beneath from the horror that lies above.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Horror
Sky
Above
Beneath
Hides
Lies
Shelters
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How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Moon
Twenties
Watches
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There is a way to master silence Control its curves, inhabit its dark corners And listen to the hiss of time outside
Paul Bowles / Composer
Curves
Dark
Silence
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How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Behinds
Dark
Sky
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If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Ifs
Moving
People
Everywhere
Alike
Manner
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Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Men
Hegemony
Sickness
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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 / Composer
Ego
People
Thinking
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Not all the ravages caused by our merciless age are tangible ones. The subtler forms of destruction, those involving only the human spirit, are the most to be dreaded.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Age
Spirit
Tangible
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I wanted to meet other artists. I suppose I simply felt that I was taking pot shots at clay pipes. Pop! Down goes Gertrude, down goes Jean Cocteau, down goes André Gide.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Artist
Clay
Gertrude
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Everyone is isolated from everyone else. The concept of society is like a cushion to protect us from the knowledge of that isolation. A fiction that serves as an anesthetic.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Fiction
Isolation
Protect
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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, convinced we're going to fall off at the next bump.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Bumps
Fall
Hanging On
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Since the world began has any man ever been able to know what would happen tomorrow? The world of men is today. I'm asking you to open your heart today. Tomorrow belongs to Allah.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Men
Asking
Heart
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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 fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Night
Sky
Stars
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One never took the time to savour the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and fatal, that there never would be a return, another time.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Details
Unique
Would Be
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It was one of the charms of the International Zone that you could get anything you wanted if you paid for it. Do anything, too, for that matter; - there were no incorruptibles. It was only a question of price.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Charm
Matter
Wanted
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The act of living had been enjoyable; at some point when I was not paying attention, it had turned into a different sort of experience, to whose grimness I had grown so accustomed that I now took it for granted.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Experience
Attention
Different
Granted
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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 / Composer
Ego
People
Thinking
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Because neither she nor Port had ever lived a life of any kind of regularity, they had both made the fatal error of coming hazily to regard time as non-existent. One year was like another year. Eventually everything would happen.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Another Year
Errors
Years
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[A]nother 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 his liking.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Civilization
Differences
Important
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The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it's having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Jewels
Moments
Perfect
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It's very hard to write about that which is always beautiful and pleasant and good. You don't get anywhere with it. There's no friction in it. There's no trouble. You have to have trouble. Somebody's got to get in trouble, or no one wants to read it.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Beautiful
Want
Writing
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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 up and expiring in the great furnace-blast of the sun.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Doubt
Dry
Worry
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I've always wanted to get as far as possible from the place where I was born. Far both geographically and spiritually. To leave it behind ... I feel that life is very short and the world is there to see and one should know as much about it as possible. One belongs to the whole world, not just one part of it.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Life Is Short
Life Is Too Short
World
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Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. Indeed, he would have found it difficult to tell, among the many places he had lived, precisely where it was he had felt most at home.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Home
Moving
Years
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Each time I go to a place I have not seen before I hope it will be as different as possible from the places I already know. I assume it is natural for a traveler to seek diversity, and that it is the human element that makes him most aware of difference. If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Differences
Moving
People
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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, he also lacked the desire. ... In utter comfort, utter relaxation he lay absolutely still for a while, and then sank back into on the the light momentary sleeps that occur after a long, profound one.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Space
Eye
Sleep
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The Hindus are busy letting themselves be seen riding in Cadillacs instead of smearing themselves with sandalwood paste and bowing in front of Ganpati. The Moslems would rather miss evening prayer than the new Disney movie. The Buddhists think it's more important to take over in the name of Stalin and Progress than to meditate on the four basic sorrows. And we don't even have to mention Christianity or Judaism.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Buddhist
Prayer
Thinking
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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 human being totally ridiculous. At least the former could be conducted in private, but the latter by definition demanded a partner. I discovered, though, that whenever I ventured this opinion, people took it as a joke.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Believe
Sex
Two
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Because we don't know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.
Paul Bowles / Composer
Death
Life
Time
Memories
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You will find yourself among people. There is no help for this nor should you want it otherwise. The passages where no one waits are dark and hard to navigate. The wet walls touch your shoulders on each side. When the trees were there I cared that they were there. And now they are gone, does it matter? The passages where no one waits go on and give no promise of an end. You will find yourself among people, Faces, clothing, teeth and hair and words, and many words When there was life, I said that life was wrong. What do I say now? You understand?
Paul Bowles / Composer
Dark
Hair
Wall
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Paul Bowles Quotes - Page 1

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