The Sheltering Sky Quotes 2l1kp

The Sheltering Sky – Paul Bowles – Quotes (Page references are to the Penguin Classics edition, 2000) 1. He did not think of himself as a tourist: he was a traveler. (10) 2. 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. And the war was one facet of the mechanized age he wanted to forget. (11) 3. ‘…Their faces are masks. They all look a thousand years old. What little energy they have is only the blind, mass desire to live, since none of them eats enough to give him his own personal force…’ (16) 4. For years it had been one of his superstitions that reality and true perception were to be found in the conversation of the labouring classes. (17) 5. The wind… blew across the barren mountains that were invisible ahead of him, over the vast flat sebkha to the edges of the town… (19) 6. “There are three girls from the mountains…” (28-30) 7. “They’re all mental defectives. Madame Gaultier herself told me they have the lowest national intelligence quotient in the world…” (43) 8. The bar was stuffy and melancholy. It was full of the sadness inherent in all deracinated things. (44) 9. ‘Europe has destroyed the world,’ said Port… ‘You’re never humanity; you’re only your poor hopelessly isolated self.’ (74) 10. ‘You know,’ said Port, and his voice sounded unreal, as voices are likely to do after a long pause in an utterly silent spot, ‘the sky here’s very strange. I often have the sensation when I look at it that it’s a solid thing up there, protecting us from what’s behind.’ (79) 11. 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. (105) 12. A dog was running along with something in its mouth, something large and suspiciously pink, part of which dragged along the ground. (119) 13. ‘Perhaps after my little investigation in Messad you will recover your identity,’ he laughed. (127) 14. It takes energy to invest life with meaning, and at the moment this energy was lacking. (127) 15. ‘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? ‘ (132) 16. When he considered it, he realized now that it rather suited his fancy to be going off with no proof of his identity to a hidden desert town about which no one could tell him anything. (P. 134) 17. The Lieutenant looked pleased; one by one the inevitable anecdotes of the colonist came out, all having to do with the juxtaposition, sometimes tragic, but usually ridiculous, of the two incongruous and incompatible cultures. (137) 18. As the motor started up, Port glanced out and saw the old man standing beside a younger one. They were both close to the windows, looking wistfully in. ‘Like two children,’ he thought, ‘who aren’t allowed to go on a picnic with the family.’ (142)

19. She looked out at the windswept emptiness. The new moon had slipped behind the earth’s sharp edge. (143) 20. The young Arab who had told her the name of the bordj [military stronghold] walked by as they sat on the floor eating. Kit could not help noticing how unusually tall he was, what as irable figure he cut when he stood erect in his flowing white garment. (146) 21. ‘It is rather wonderful,’ she thought, to be riding past such people in the Atomic Age.’ (147) 22. Outside in the dust was the disorder of Africa, but for the first time without any visible sign of European influence, so that the scene had a purity which had been lacking in the other towns, an unexpected quality of being complete which dissipated the feeling of chaos. (149) 23. It gave her momentary pleasure to think of that dark little world, the handbag smelling of leather and cosmetics, that lay between the hostile air and her body. Nothing was changed in there; the same objects fell against each other in the same limited chaos, and the names were still there, still represented the same things. Mark Cross, Caron, Helena Rubenstein. ‘Helena Rubenstein,’ she said aloud, and it made her laugh. (155-6) 24. Whenever they said the words he heard in them an implicit reproach: it is not difficult to build a straight road on a treeless plain. (158) 25. A journal, filled in each evening with the day’s thoughts, carefully seasoned with local colour, in which the absolute truth of the theorem he would set forth in the beginning – namely, that the difference between something and nothing is nothing – would be clearly and calmly demonstrated. (158) 26. She listened a while, decided it was comion she felt, and leaned nearer to him. (165) 27. ‘He’s stopped being human,’ she said to herself. Illness reduces man to his basic state: a cloaca in which the chemical processes continue. The meaningless hegemony of the involuntary. (171) 28. Again he sighed. ‘I feel very sick. I feel awful. There’s no reason to be afraid, but I am. Sometimes I’m not here, and I don’t like that. Because then I’m far away and all alone. No one could ever get there. It’s too far. And I’m there alone.’ (173) 29. Words were much more alive and more difficult to handle, now; so much so that Kit did not seem to understand them… less and less he used them in his thinking. (177) 30. It was an existence of exile from the world. He never saw a human face or figure, nor even an animal: there were no familiar objects along the way, there was no ground below, nor sky above, yet the space was full of things. (178) 31. The Captain did not believe a word she was saying; he considered it all an irable piece of lying. He was convinced now that she was not only an adventuress, but a truly suspicious character. (180) 32. The whole, monstrous star-filled sky was turning sideways before her eyes. It looked still as death, yet it moved. (181) 33. He was at the edge of a realm where each thought, each image, had an arbitrary existence, where the connection between each thing and the next had been cut. (181) 34. He opened his eyes, shut his eyes, saw only the thin sky stretched across to protect him. (186) 35. His cry went through the final image: the spots of raw, bright blood on the earth… Reach out, pierce the fine fabric of the sheltering sky, take repose. (188) 36. ‘Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life...’ (190) 37. She watched fascinated while two flies made their brief, frantic love on his lower lip. (192)

38. Only an American could do anything so unheard-of as to lock her sick husband into a room and run off into the desert, leaving him behind to die alone. (200) 39. Little by little she found herself considering him with affection… (219-220) 40. She was pleased to lay aside her own clothes… and it was with growing delight that she pulled on the full soft tros and got into the loose vest and the flowing robe. (224) 41. ‘He’s your husband,’ she whispered to herself, and stood still a second in horror. Then she almost giggled: it was only a part of this ridiculous game she had been playing. (238) 42. There was no end to the world’s intense monotony. (245)