Paul Bowles's Quotes

If people and their manner of living were alike everywhere, there would not be much point in moving from one place to another.

The sky hides the night behind it, and shelters the people beneath from the horror that lies above.

I was a gang leader. Although, it was a gang for defensive purposes. It was not a gang to sell drugs.

Performance art can be produced in a coffee house setting.

A performance art piece is unprecedented. It is difficult to censor since it has a good possibility of never being done before.

All good performance pieces have some philosophical validity. That's the difference between mere theater and performance art.

But my patriotism goes for something beyond what we have. We don't have something that I want to die for - anymore.

Freedom. It's not something you go out and die for.

It is better to go down in infamy than to never go down at all.

My 80-year-old mother will not buy her heart medicine because it cost more than she can pay with social security. She is America.

My kids are free to do what ever they want. Because I only advise. I don't make them do anything.

Performance art is the ultimate in creativity. Since it has so many possibilities at creativity, it's essence tends to become creativity.

The act is truth. Nothing that was ever recorded is truth. Nothing that was ever said is truth. Only the act.

At one point, when I was 20 and living in Kentucky, I got shot - it was a land dispute over six inches of property that ran a hundred yards through my grandfather's land. It was really over the honor of my family and that of another family.

Basically the school system sets you up with what it wants to set you up with. They're really good at it. I think they're too good. Problem is, what they're doing is conditioning kids to merely accept the culture at hand. But the rebels won't accept it.

I believe that I understand gangs better than others. Because they're formed out of necessity. They're formed by people to keep from being suppressed.

I love old books. They tell you stories about their use. You can see where the fingerprints touched the pages as they held the book open. You can see how long they lingered on each page by the finger stains.

I'm still very aware of the violence in our culture, more so than other people. I know where it comes from when someone is trying to suppress someone else, sometimes they fight back.

I've been in elementary education for years and my belief is that Christmas pageants in schools are little more than conditioning kids for the Christian religion.

Maybe it will be a great thing when the Baby Boomers finally die out. In real life, it's not a matter of the good guys or the bad guys. Rather, it's big numbers and small numbers that do the counting.

My art and poetry is very political now. Because you've got to find that truth within you and express yourself. Somewhere out there, I know, there will be people who will listen.

My parents were laborers so we lived on South Park, which was a low-income region of Seattle. You had a choice - you either joined or formed a gang or you let others bully you.

Performance art can involve the audience with taste, smell and sounds not available with electronic media and not practical with conventional theater. This is due to the usually small audience.