Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles
Paul Frederic Bowleswas an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. He became associated with Tangier, Morocco, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his life...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionComposer
Date of Birth30 December 1910
CountryUnited States of America
political fiction consideration
Fiction should always steer clear of political considerations.
writing sides thieves
Publishers are thieves, they are on the other side of the barricade.
thinking people ego
It's unnecessary and destructive to think of oneself at all. People ask me, 'What do you think of yourself as?' My answer is, 'Nothing.
years errors another-year
Because neither she nor Port had ever lived a life of any kind of regularity, they had both made the fatal error of coming hazily to regard time as non-existent. One year was like another year. Eventually everything would happen.
moving people ifs
If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another.
heart men asking
Since the world began has any man ever been able to know what would happen tomorrow? The world of men is today. I'm asking you to open your heart today. Tomorrow belongs to Allah ...
sex believe two
Although I knew enough Freud to believe that the sex urge was an important mainspring of life, it still seemed to me that any conscious manifestation of sex was necessarily ludicrous. Defecation and copulation were two activities which made a human being totally ridiculous. At least the former could be conducted in private, but the latter by definition demanded a partner. I discovered, though, that whenever I ventured this opinion, people took it as a joke.
sleep eye light
He awoke, opened his eye. The room meant very little to him; he was too deeply immersed in the non-being from which he had just come. If he had not the energy to ascertain his position in time and space, he also lacked the desire. ... In utter comfort, utter relaxation he lay absolutely still for a while, and then sank back into on the the light momentary sleeps that occur after a long, profound one.
beautiful writing want
It's very hard to write about that which is always beautiful and pleasant and good. You don't get anywhere with it. There's no friction in it. There's no trouble. You have to have trouble. Somebody's got to get in trouble, or no one wants to read it.
effort geography
The only effort worth making is the one it takes to learn the geography of one's own nature.
men hegemony sickness
Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary.
fiction isolation protect
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.
change sacrifice lost
Security is a false God. Begin to make sacrifices to it and you are lost.
lying night sky
The sky hides the night behind it and shelters the people beneath from the horror that lies above.