“ Having arrived at this point, he had found no direction in which to go save that of further withdrawal into a subjectivity which refused existence to any reality or law but its own. During these postw… Paul Bowles
“ Although this was not a comforting point of view, he did not reject it, because it coincided with one of his basic beliefs: that a man must at all costs keep some part of himself outside and beyond li… Paul Bowles
“ Every little thing makes a difference, whether you decide it yourself or whether it’s pure accident. So many people have had the whole course of their lives changed by something perfectly simple like,… Paul Bowles
“ The key question, it seemed to him, was that of whether man was to obey Nature, or attempt to command her. It had been answered long, long ago, claimed Moss; man's very essence lay in the fact that he… Paul Bowles
“ The insistent drums were an unwelcome reminder of the existence of another world, wholly autonomous, with its own necessities and patterns. The message they were beating out, over and over, was for he… Paul Bowles
“ There's a little war in progress here. There won't be anything left of the place if it goes on at this rate. (But it's hard to feign innocence if you've eaten the apple, he reflected.) And it looks to… Paul Bowles
“ And its derivatives are strictly prohibited in Turkey, and the natural correlative of this proscription is that alcohol, far from being frowned upon as it is in other Moslem lands, is freely drunk; be… Paul Bowles
“ 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. Paul Bowles
“ But there was never any knowing or any certitude; the time to come always had more than one possible direction. One could not even give up hope. The wind would blow, the sand would settle, and in some… Paul Bowles
“ He still felt coreless - he was no one, and he was standing here in the middle of no country. The place was counterfeit, a waiting room between connections, a transition from one way of being to anoth… Paul Bowles
“ There could be nothing, he reflected, to equal a government which was simply the honest enforcement, by means of the sword, of the laws of Islam. Paul Bowles
“ The rest of the world was there for her to take at any moment she wished it, but she always rejected it in favour of her own familiar little cosmos. Paul Bowles
“ Amar was made conscious in an instant of a presence in the air, something which had been there all the time, but which he had never isolated and identified. The thing was in him, he was a part of it,… Paul Bowles
“ How could any young man merely sit back and wait for divine justice to take its course? It was asking the impossible. Paul Bowles
“ Only then did he understand that he really wanted to know nothing about El Ga’a beyond the fact that it was isolated and unfrequented, that it was precisely those things he had been trying to ascertai… Paul Bowles
