Paul Bowles
Born: 01-01-1956
Paul Bowles was an American expatriate writer and composer, renowned for his novel "The Sheltering Sky." Born in 1910, Bowles spent much of his life in Tangier, Morocco, where he immersed himself in the local culture. His works often explore themes of existential despair and cultural dislocation. In addition to his literary achievements, Bowles composed music for theater and film, leaving a significant mark on 20th-century arts.
Book summaries for books written by Paul Bowles
Quotes
Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But 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 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 twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
How fragile we are under the sheltering sky. Behind the sheltering sky is a vast dark universe, and we're just so small.
Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.
People tend to see what they expect to see, and what people expect to see never amounts to much, or to anything at all.
To travel is worth any cost or sacrifice.
For isn't it simply that everyone's lives are in turmoil? We're all tormented by our own ignorance.
Death is chasing you, don't be chased. You must go on without knowing why.
Earth says have a place, sky says have freedom, but only the wind can fly.
We turn our backs on nature; we are ashamed of beauty. Our wretched tragedies have a smell of the office cling to them, and the blood that trickles from them is the color of printer's ink.
You exist not in what you think you are but in what you think, therefore your thinking should be in your hands at all times.
It was as if they were all hypnotized by some collective nightmare in which they were compelled to live.
Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace.