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Paul Bowles Biography

Paul Frederic Bowles (/boʊlz/; December 30, 1910 – November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. He became associated with Tangier, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his life.

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Paul Bowles Quotes

No one can ever heap enough insults upon me to suit my taste. I think we all really thrive on hostility, because it's the most intense kind of massage the ego can undergo. Other people's indifference is the only horror.

Thinking, People, Ego, Enough, Undergo

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

Beneath, Lying, Night, People, Sky

The only effort worth making is the one it takes to learn the geography of one's own nature.

Effort, Geography, Making, Nature

The act of living had been enjoyable; at some point when I was not paying attention, it had turned into a different sort of experience, to whose grimness I had grown so accustomed that I now took it for granted.

Attention, Different, Experience, Paying, Sort, Turned

She was saved from prettiness by the intensity of her gaze.

Intensity, Prettiness, Saved, Gaze

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.

Charm, Charms, Incorruptibles, Matter, Paid, Wanted

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.

Ask, Destructive, Ego, People, Think, Thinking

[A]nother important difference between tourist and traveler is that the former accepts his own civilization without question; not so the traveler, who compares it with the others, and rejects those elements he finds not to his liking.

Civilization, Compares, Difference, Differences, Important

Every second, ten stars set behind the black water in the west.

Black, Set, Stars, Ten, Water, West

If you don't know why you like a thing, it is usually worth your while to attempt to find out.

Attempt, Ifs, Know, Knows, Like, Usually

Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. Indeed, he would have found it difficult to tell, among the many places he had lived, precisely where it was he had felt most at home.

Back, Home, Moving, Next Move, Precisely

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, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.

Afternoon, Death, Life, Limitless, Perhaps, Time

One never took the time to savour the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and fatal, that there never would be a return, another time.

Details, Said, Took, Unique, Would Be

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.

Doubt, Dry, Evaporating, Expiring, Sun, Worry

I've always wanted to get as far as possible from the place where I was born. Far both geographically and spiritually. To leave it behind. . . I feel that life is very short and the world is there to see and one should know as much about it as possible. One belongs to the whole world, not just one part of it.

Born, Life Is, Place, See, Spiritually, World

Publishers are thieves, they are on the other side of the barricade.

Barricade, Side, Sides, Thieves, Writing

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.

Believe, Discovered, Human, Manifestation, Sex, Two

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.

Another Year, Errors, Fatal, Happen, Time, Years

The soul is the weariest part of the body.

Body, Part, Parts Of The Body, Soul, Weariest

I wanted to meet other artists. I suppose I simply felt that I was taking pot shots at clay pipes. Pop! Down goes Gertrude, down goes Jean Cocteau, down goes André Gide.

Artist, Artists, Clay, Down, Gertrude, Meet

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Paul Bowles Biography

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