The Sheltering Sky

by Paul Bowles

As she stared she found herself wondering why it was that a diseased face, which basically means nothing, should be so much more horrible to look at than a face whose tissues are healthy but whose expression reveals an interior corruption. Port would say that in a non-materialistic age it would not be thus. And probably he would be right.

his voice sounded unreal, as voices are likely to do after a long pause in an utterly silent spot,

“But you complain so all the time.” “Oh, not about life; only about human beings.”