The Sheltering Sky Quotes
"He was somewhere, he had come back through vast"
"What right did you have to go to Mogador, when I was dying in Fez? Mr. Moresby, I was dying!"
Resistance!" shrieked Mrs. Lyle. "I refuse to talk any more.
"It all comes from lack of discipline. I only wish you had to earn your living for one day."
"Look, look! Mr. Moresby! That sweet burro! It reminds me of Spain."
"Didn’t you know? The hotels are full of them. They run the country."
"Oh, I know Jews. I’ve had too many vile experiences with them not to know them."
"He’s the loneliest woman he had ever seen, but he could not care very much."
"The train that went always faster was merely an epitome of life itself."
"I’m not going to carry a passport to existence around with me, to prove I have the right to be here!"
"Humanity is everyone but one’s self. So of what interest can it possibly be to anybody?"
"I’m doing all right by it, too, you may have noticed. So here’s to good old Mumm!"
"The sun burned. They came to a village, went through it."
"I think we’re both afraid of the same thing. And for the same reason."
"The soul is the weariest part of the body."
"We have flowers, fruit, trees. Aïn Krorfa is never sad. It is peaceful and full of joy."
"Yes, yes, yes," said M. Chaoui. "Another time perhaps it will be warmer."
"You don’t say a frieze is superficial just because it has only two dimensions."
"If it doesn’t, what was the point of seeing the man in the first place?"
"Oh, nonsense! It’s just another way of living they have, a completely different philosophy."
"Don’t think about me. Whatever happens, I’ll be all right if I’m with you."
"It’s not a good idea generally to make fun of your host."
"Then I’ll be back in the streets of Aïn Krorfa I was whistling."
"What are you carrying there?" Port held up the bottle, smiling faintly.
"I’m here with my wife? That’s it," said the lieutenant to himself. "He’s having trouble with his wife. Poor devil!"
"Why must it be an American?" With a Frenchman he would have known how to go about persuading him to do it without any unpleasantness.
"If I could only be in bed and lie out flat, I’d be all right, I think."
"It takes energy to invest life with meaning, and at present this energy was lacking."
"I only hope there are no mountains to cross," she said to herself, wishing again, but more fervently now, that they had gone to Italy, or any small country with boundaries, where the villages had churches and one went to the station in a taxi or a carriage, and could travel by daylight.
"I hate deceit," she said with great feeling.
"It’s only a few hours more—then bed, thank God."
"It’s not weakness the way it is with you. Not at all. It takes more will power for me to make myself take a drink than it does for you not to."
"Perhaps after my little investigation in Messad you will recover your identity," he laughed.
"Oh, God, shut up!" he cried aloud, groaning immediately afterward.
"Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life."
"I’m dizzy. It’s a fever, I know that much."
"Everyone makes the life he wants. Right?"
"One never knows what a person is made of until the moment of stress."
"But how near were they? He could not tell: the debris had pinned him to the earth."
"The first thing she did on arriving back in the room was to light the lamp."
"The time to come always had more than one possible direction."
"It’s a prison, I’m a prisoner here, and for how long? God knows."
"I’m very sick, I don’t know whether I’ll come back."
"You can’t get in to him until morning. So relax."
"As the minutes went by, she felt no impulse to move; no thought wandered near her."
"The person who frantically has been counting the seconds on his way to catch a train, and arrives panting just as it disappears, feels something of the same sudden surfeit of time."
"The stars were above. He paused in front of a door. 'You can sleep here.'"
"My wife wants to know if you like noodles."
"The light of the moon was violent—walking along the white street in it was like being in the sunlight."
"The sound came from the direction of the ksar, the Negro village in the middle of the oasis."
"The sand was soft, but its coldness penetrated her garments."
"Life was suddenly there, she was in it, not looking through the window at it."
"She bathed lengthily; the cool water on her skin awakened an impulse to sing."
"The sound of the drums was louder: now she could hear voices repeating a rhythmical refrain, always the same."
"At the hour when the sun shone its hottest, they came within sight of an oasis."
"The music went on, the women regularly punctuated its cadences with their yodeling screams."
"The signal... It was beating when I came."
"The drums had awakened the cocks in the vicinity, and they were beginning to crow."
"She could scarcely believe her good luck: they were far more interested in the valise than in her."
"Kit, making a grimace of desperation, put her fingers to her lips, took a few exaggeratedly cautious steps on tiptoe, and pointed repeatedly at the servant."
"The sound of the last word was like a needle piercing her flesh."
"Unblinking, she fixed the solid emptiness, and the anguish began to move in her."
"For an endless moment she looked into it. Like a great overpowering sound it destroyed everything in her mind, paralyzed her."
"The sun was painful; he, too, was sweating."
"The sky hides the night behind it, shelters the person beneath from the horror that lies above."
"Cry a little while, but not too long. A little while is good. Too long is bad."
"She had no feeling of being anywhere, of being anyone."
"That was what had been the matter: she had been sick, probably for years."
"She sat like a stone figure. Her face, now in the shadows cast by the passersby, now full in the light of the electric sign at the hotel entrance, had changed so utterly that Miss Ferry was appalled."
"Below, the harbor lights came into view and were distorted in the gently moving water."
"At the edge of the Arab quarter the car, still loaded with people, made a wide U-turn and stopped; it was the end of the line."