Paul Bowles
author profile
born
December 10, 1910
died
November 18, 1999
gender
male
place of birth
Jamaica, Queens, NY, The United States
website
genre
Literature & Fiction
about this author
Paul Bowles grew up in New York, and attended college at the University of Virginia before traveling to Paris, where became a part of Gertrude Stein's literary and artistic circle. Following her advice, he took his first trip to Tangiers in 1931 with his friend, composer Aaron Copeland.
In 1938 he married author and playwright Jane Auer (see: Jane Bowles). He moved to Tangiers permanently in 1947, with Auer following him there in 1948. There they became fixtures of the American and European expatriate scene, their visitors including Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams and Gore Vidal. Bowles continued to live in Tangiers after the death of his wife in 1973.
Bowles died of heart failure in Tangier on November 18, 1999. H...more
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avg rating: 4.04
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| 102 distinct works
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More books by Paul Bowles…
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The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles avg rating 3.99 — 1,976 ratings — published 1949 22 editions |
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Let It Come Down: A Novel by Paul Bowles avg rating 4.04 — 234 ratings — published 1953 12 editions |
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The Stories of Paul Bowles by Paul Bowles avg rating 4.35 — 189 ratings — published 2001 3 editions |
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Collected Stories, 1939-1976 by Paul Bowles avg rating 4.50 — 162 ratings — published 1979 2 editions |
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Spider's House: A Novel by Paul Bowles avg rating 4.13 — 166 ratings — published 1982 10 editions |
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The Delicate Prey: And Other Stories by Paul Bowles avg rating 4.43 — 151 ratings — published 1950 6 editions |
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Up Above the World: A Novel by Paul Bowles avg rating 3.67 — 153 ratings — published 1966 6 editions |
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A Distant Episode: The Selected Stories by Paul Bowles avg rating 4.27 — 88 ratings — published 1996 3 editions |
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A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard by Paul Bowles avg rating 4.02 — 90 ratings — published 1981 |
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Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue: Scenes from the Non-Christian World by Paul Bowles avg rating 4.16 — 86 ratings — published 1984 7 editions |
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"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. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens 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's 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. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
— Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky)
— Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky)
""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, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.""
— Paul Bowles
— Paul Bowles
"How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's 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."
— Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky)
— Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky)
topics mentioning this author
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