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The Spider's House

Paul Bowles

Top 10 Best Quotes

“The only thing that makes life worth living is the possibility of experiencing now and then a perfect moment. And perhaps even more than that, it's having the ability to recall such moments in their totality, to contemplate them like jewels.”

“If people are living the same as always, with their bellies full of food, they'll just go on the same way. If they get hungry and unhappy enough, something happens.”

“...before there can be change there must be discontent.”

“How peaceful it was, with the light evening breeze stirring the small leaves of the grapevine that clustered around the electric bulb, making the shadows move and change on the yellow mat below. For a moment he pushed aside the thought of money. From time to time the dark water beside them rippled audibly, as if a tiny fish had come to the surface for an instant and then darted beneath. It was in peaceful moments such as this, his father had said, that men were given to know just a little of what paradise was like, so that they might yearn for it with all their soul,and strive during their time on earth to be worthy of going there.”

“One of these days the future will be here, and you won't be ready for it.”

“If you could not have freedom you could still have vengeance.”

“He could not feel at ease with gourmets and hedonists; they were a hostile species.”

“Writing is harmless, and it keeps me in dinners and out of trouble.”

“Fiction should always steer clear of political considerations.”

“When I first came here it was a pure country. There was music and dancing and magic every day in the streets. "Now it's finished, everything. Even the religion. In a few more years the whole country will be like all the other Moslem countries, just a huge European slum, full of poverty and hatred.”

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Book Keywords:

power, colonialism, change, gourmets, hedonists, fiction, the-future, paradise, contemplation, discontent, writing, yearning, politics, hunger

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