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.
Paul BowlesRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the desire for exploration and the importance of experiencing the world beyond one's origins.
In this quote, Paul Bowles expresses a deep yearning to transcend both the physical and spiritual confines of one's birthplace. He suggests that life is fleeting, encouraging a broadening of horizons and a profound understanding of the world, advocating for a universal belonging that goes beyond individual attachment to a specific locale.
Themes
ExplorationWanderlustLifeBelongingExperience
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about travel and exploration, one might use this quote to inspire adventure.
More from Paul Bowles
All quotes →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.
Paul BowlesRead
Each time I go to a place I have not seen before I hope it will be as different as possible from the places I already know. I assume it is natural for a traveler to seek diversity, and that it is the human element that makes him most aware of difference. If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another.
Paul BowlesRead
[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 BowlesRead
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.
Paul BowlesRead
Similar quotes
Obscenity is a moral concept in the verbal arsenal of the establishment, which abuses the term by applying it, not to expressions of its own morality but to those of another.
Herbert MarcuseRead
The protection of the masses has in all times been the pretense of tyranny - the plea of monarchy, of aristocracy, of special privilege of every kind. The slave owners justified slavery as protecting the slaves.
Henry GeorgeRead
Poverty is not a lack of character. Poverty is a lack of cash.
Rutger BregmanRead
It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
The Frenchman works until he can play. The American works until he can’t play; and then thanks the devil, his master, that he is donkey enough to die in harness. But the Englishman, as he has since become, works until he can pretend that he never worked at all.
Gilbert K. ChestertonRead
There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge.
Hunter S. ThompsonRead