Paul Bowles

Born

in Jamaica, Queens, NY, The United States

December 10, 1910

Died

November 18, 1999

Website

http://www.paulbowles.org/

Genre

Literature & Fiction

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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. His ashes were interred nea ...more

Combine Editions
Paul Bowles’s books

Average rating: 3.94 · 39,731 ratings · 3,091 reviews · 147 distinct works • Similar authors

	The Sheltering Sky 3.91 avg rating — 24,820 ratings — published 1949 — 89 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Let it Come Down 3.91 avg rating — 1,839 ratings — published 1952 — 39 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Spider's House by Paul Bowles, Francine Prose (Goodreads Author) (Introduction) 4.01 avg rating — 1,523 ratings — published 1955 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Stories of Paul Bowles by Paul Bowles, Robert Stone (Introduction) 4.29 avg rating — 1,081 ratings — published 2001 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Collected Stories, 1939-1976 by Paul Bowles, Gore Vidal (Introduction) 4.42 avg rating — 700 ratings — published 1979 — 13 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Up Above the World 3.66 avg rating — 997 ratings — published 1966 — 30 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	The Delicate Prey and Other Stories 4.21 avg rating — 801 ratings — published 1945 — 28 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Their Heads are Green and Their Hands are Blue: Scenes from the Non-Christian World by Paul Bowles, Edmund White (Introduction) 4.05 avg rating — 546 ratings — published 1957 — 11 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Distant Episode: The Selected Stories 4.18 avg rating — 408 ratings — published 1992 — 9 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Hundred Camels in the Courtyard 3.97 avg rating — 339 ratings — published 1981 — 7 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

More books by Paul Bowles…

Quotes by Paul Bowles

“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

tags: sheltering-sky-bowles-death-life

422 likes

“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

195 likes

“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

118 likes

See all Paul Bowles's quotes »

Polls

March 2016 New School Group Read

1950, The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, 182 pages

26 votes, 12.9%

1987, Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami, 296 pages

24 votes, 11.9%

1972, Watership Down by Richard Adams, 481 pages

20 votes, 9.9%

1965, In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, 343 pages

20 votes, 9.9%

1966, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, 360 pages

15 votes, 7.4%

1955, On the Road by Jack Kerouac, 307 pages

14 votes, 6.9%

1963, Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, 179 pages

12 votes, 5.9%

1928, Orlando by Virginia Woolf, 228 pages

11 votes, 5.4%

1987, Beloved by Toni Morrison, 324 pages

11 votes, 5.4%

1940, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, 368 pages

9 votes, 4.5%

1927, Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, 297 pages

9 votes, 4.5%

1919, Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson, 240 pages

8 votes, 4.0%

1931, The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck, 418 pages

8 votes, 4.0%

1958, The Tin Drum by Günter Grass, 567 pages

5 votes, 2.5%

1920, Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset, 1168 pages

4 votes, 2.0%

1956, The Black Obelisk by Erich Maria Remarque, 448 pages

2 votes, 1.0%

1937, Christ in Concrete by Pietro Di Donato, 256 pages

2 votes, 1.0%

1949, The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles, 342 pages

2 votes, 1.0%

202 total votes

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