112 Quotes by Paul Bowles

How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small.

When I first came here it was a pure country. There was music and dancing and magic every day in the streets."Now it's finished, everything. Even the religion. In a few more years the whole country will be like all the other Moslem countries, just a huge European slum, full of poverty and hatred.

One of these days the future will be here, and you won't be ready for it.

The people of each country get more like the people of every other country. They have no character, no beauty, no ideals, no culture-nothing, nothing.”… “Everything’s getting gray, and it’ll be grayer.

Tangier is more New York than New York. ... Then you must see how alike the two places are. The life revolves wholly about the making of money. Practically everyone is dishonest. In New York you have Wall Street, here you have the Bourse. ... In New York you have the slick financiers, here the money changers. In New York you have your racketeers. Here you have your smugglers. And you have every nationality and no civic pride.

...a man could scarcely make his writing a reason for living unless he believed in the validity of that writing.

But there was never any knowing or any certitude; the time to come always had more than one possible direction. One could not even give up hope. The wind would blow, the sand would settle, and in some as yet unforeseen manner time would bring about a change which could only be terrifying, since it would not be a continuation of the present.

He could not feel at ease with gourmets and hedonists; they were a hostile species.

The idea that at each successive moment he was deeper into the Sahara than he had been the moment before, that he was leaving behind all familiar things, this constant consideration kept him in a state of pleasurable agitation.