Quotes from book
The Sheltering Sky

The Sheltering Sky
Paul Bowles

The Sheltering Sky is a 1949 novel of alienation and existential despair by American writer and composer Paul Bowles.

“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.”

Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky

The Sheltering Sky (1949)
Context: 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, some 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.

“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 book The Sheltering Sky

Source: The Sheltering Sky

“The soul is the weariest part of the body.”

Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky

Source: The Sheltering Sky

“[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.”

Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky

Source: The Sheltering Sky

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

Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky

Source: The Sheltering Sky

“Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary.”

Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky

Source: The Sheltering Sky

“So she said banteringly: "What's the unit of exchange in this different world of yours?"
He did not hesitate. "The tear."
"It isn't fair," she objected. "Some people have to work very hard for a tear. Others can have them just for thinking."
"What system of exchange is fair?" he cried, and his voice sounded as if he were really drunk. "And whoever invented the concept of fairness, anyway? Isn't everything easier if you simply get rid of the idea of justice altogether? You think the quantity of pleasure, the degree of suffering is constant among all men? It somehow comes out in the end? You think that? If it comes out even it's only because the final sum is zero."”

Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky

The Sheltering Sky (1949)

“Many days later another caravan was passing and a man saw something on top of the highest dune there. And when they went up to see, they found Outka, Mimouna and Aicha; they were still there, lying the same way as when they had gone to sleep. And all three of the glasses… were full of sand. That was how they had their tea in the Sahara.”

Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky

The Sheltering Sky (1949)

“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.”

Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky

Source: The Sheltering Sky (1949), p. 210

“For in order to avoid having to deal with relative values, he had long since come to deny all purpose to the phenomenon of existence — it was more expedient and comforting.”

Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky

Source: The Sheltering Sky (1949), p. 65

“How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

Paul Bowles book The Sheltering Sky

The Sheltering Sky (1949)
Context: 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, some 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.

Similar authors

Paul Bowles photo
Paul Bowles22
American composer, writer, translator 1910–1999
Tomas Tranströmer photo
Tomas Tranströmer6
Swedish poet, psychologist and translator None
Fernando Pessoa photo
Fernando Pessoa288
Portuguese poet, writer, literary critic, translator, publi… None
Czeslaw Milosz photo
Czeslaw Milosz106
Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator None
John Cage photo
John Cage43
American avant-garde composer None
Alessandro Baricco photo
Alessandro Baricco9
Italian writer None
Jorge Luis Borges photo
Jorge Luis Borges213
Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator… None
Cesare Pavese photo
Cesare Pavese137
Italian poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator None
Frank Zappa photo
Frank Zappa129
American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and fil… None
Paul McCartney photo
Paul McCartney50
English singer-songwriter and composer None