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

Paul Bowles

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Paul Bowles
Age: 88 †
Born: 1910
Born: January 1
Died: 1999
Died: January 1
Author
Composer
Music Critic
Photographer
Translator
Writer
Queens
New York
Paul Frederic Bowles
Behind
Second
Stars
Water
Black
Every
Ten
West
Behinds

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We've never managed, either one of us, to get all the way into life. We're hanging on to the outside for all we're worth, convinced we're going to fall off at the next bump.
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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.
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Fiction should always steer clear of political considerations.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary.
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A black star appears, a point of darkness in the night sky's clarity. Point of darkness and gateway to repose. Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose.
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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.
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Not all the ravages caused by our merciless age are tangible ones. The subtler forms of destruction, those involving only the human spirit, are the most to be dreaded.
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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.
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She was saved from prettiness by the intensity of her gaze.
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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.
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The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it's having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels.
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