The Sheltering Sky

by Paul Bowles

He was somewhere, he had come back through vast regions from nowhere; there was the certitude of an infinite sadness at the core of his consciousness, but the sadness was reassuring, because it alone was familiar.

But how difficult it was to accept the high, narrow room with its beamed ceiling, the huge apathetic designs stenciled in indifferent colors around the walls, the closed window of red and orange glass.

she was saved from prettiness by the intensity of her gaze.

It takes energy to invest life with meaning, and at present this energy was lacking.

No hunter wants his prey chosen and run to earth for him, even if it means the only assurance of a kill.

“From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.” —KAFKA

“There’s something repulsive about an American without money in his pocket,” she had said to Mr. Clarke.