112 Quotes by Paul Bowles

Tangier is a one-horse town that happens to have its own government.

Nu se considera un turist; era doar un călător. Diferența dintre cele două era, printre altele, una de timp [...]. În vreme ce turistul în genere se grăbește spre casă la capătul a câteva săptămâni sau luni, călătorul, nedepinzând de un loc mai mult decât de altul, se deplasează încet, ani în șir, dintr-o parte a globului în alta.

But don't we all like to be overpowered, one time or another.

Still, he could not think of the mass of Moroccans without contempt. He had no patience with their ignorance and backwardness; if he damned the Europeans with one breath, he was bound to damn the Moroccans with the next. No one escaped but him, and that was because he hated himself most of all.

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.

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.

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.

The sky hides the night behind it, and shelters the people beneath from the horror that lies above.

If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another.