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The Sheltering Sky
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"The Sheltering Sky" Quotes

An American couple's journey through the treacherous landscapes of North Africa tests their relationships and sanity.

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.

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.

Paul Bowles

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality.

Paul Bowles

People tend to see what they expect to see, and what people expect to see never amounts to much, or to anything at all.

Paul Bowles

To travel is worth any cost or sacrifice.

Paul Bowles

For isn't it simply that everyone's lives are in turmoil? We're all tormented by our own ignorance.

Paul Bowles

Death is chasing you, don't be chased. You must go on without knowing why.

Paul Bowles

Earth says have a place, sky says have freedom, but only the wind can fly.

Paul Bowles

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.

Paul Bowles

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.

Paul Bowles