Paul Bowles Quotes.

11. "If you don’t know why you like a thing, it is usually worth your while to attempt to find out."
- Quote by Paul Bowles

12. "the writer: "a spy sent into life by the forces of death. His main objective is to get the information across the border, back into death. Then he can be given a mythic personality: 'he spent time among us, betrayed us, and took the material across the border."
- Quote by Paul Bowles

13. "There have been times, what with this and that, when the whisper of words was not enough. On some shelf of memory lies a misplaced summer, one not stored away for later savoring. Surely it ended early, with unexpected fogs, with the wind sliding past through unmeasured darkness. No voice could be enough, what with this and that, and the hours falling faster."
- Quote by Paul Bowles

14. "He did not look up because he knew how senseless the landscape would appear. It takes energy to invest life with meaning, and at present this energy was lacking."
- Quote by Paul Bowles

15. "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, some 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 twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
- Quote by Paul Bowles

16. "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."
- Quote by Paul Bowles

17. "You know, said Port, and his voice sounded unreal, as voices are likely to do after a long pause in an utterly silent spot, the sky here’s very strange. I often have the sensation when I look at it that it’s a solid thing up there, protecting us from what’s behind. Kit shuddered slightly as she said: From what’s behind? Yes. But what is behind? Her voice was very small. Nothing, I suppose. Just darkness. Absolute night"
- Quote by Paul Bowles

18. "You know," said Port, and his voice sounded unreal, as voices are likely to do after a long pause in an utterly silent spot, "the sky here's very strange. I often have the sensation when I look at it that it's a solid thing up there, protecting us from what's behind." Kit shuddered slightly as she said: "From behind?" "Yes." "But what is behind?" Her voice was very small. "Nothing, I suppose. Just darkness. Absolute night."
- Quote by Paul Bowles

19. "The wind blew the dust along the ground into his mouth as he sang."
- Paul Bowles, Collected Stories

20. "At some point in the night she had a dream. Or it was possible that she was partially awake, and was only remembering a dream? She was alone among the rocks on a dark coast beside the sea. The water surged upward and fell back languidly, and in the distance she heard surf breaking slowly on a sandy shore. It was comforting to be this close to the surface of the ocean and gaze at the intimate nocturnal details of its swelling and ebbing. And as she listened to the faraway breakers rolling up onto the beach, she became aware of another sound entwined with the intermittent crash of waves: a vast horizontal whisper across the bossom of the sea, carrying an ever-repeated phrase, regular as a lighthouse flashing: Dawn will be breaking soon. She listened a long time: again and again the scarcely audible words were whispered across the moving water. A great weight was being lifted slowly from her; little by little her happiness became more complete, and she awoke. Then she lay for a few minutes marveling the dream, and once again fell asleep."
- Paul Bowles, Up Above the World