Paul Bowles quotes

I don't see myself as a consummate anything.

I didn't find the United States particularly interesting and once I found places that were more interesting I chose to live in them, which I think makes sense.

There was nothing I wanted there, and once I'd moved away I saw that all I needed from the States was money. I went back there for that.

I cut the composing cord in 1947, when I moved here, although, as I say, I went back several times to write scores for Broadway.

You do them with separate parts of the brain, I think. And you derive different kinds of pleasure from them.

No one can ever heap enough insults upon me to suit my taste. I think we all really thrive on hostility, because it's the most intense kind of massage the ego can undergo. Other people's indifference is the only horror.

I suppose it is to give pleasure, and to give it through a medium which involves the intellect.

It has changed enormously over the years, but there are an awful lot of people coming to see me every day now, and that isn't so good for work.

Composers are better fitted to say what's in a new piece of music than most critics.

I made it at seventeen, so I guess you'd say it was an early decision. Some people absorb things more quickly than others, and I think I had a fairly good idea of what life would be like for me in the States, and I didn't want it.

I expect enormous things to happen in the future, but I don't think they'll be things which people born in my generation will think are great and wonderful.

One always thinks everything's got worse—and in most respects it has—but that's meaningless. What does one mean when one says that things are getting worse? It's becoming more like the future, that's all.