Bruce Chatwin Quotes

And all around is the desert; a corner of the mournful kingdom of sand.

The desert feels Irish in a way - lonely and barren.

One place that I looked at a lot from space and which looks alluring is New Zealand, especially the North Island. It's a big broad valley with a river flowing through it, and you can see the wine-making dryness of the land.

My favourite places on earth are the wild waterways where the forest opens its arms and a silver curve of river folds the traveller into its embrace.

There is such a peace out in the middle of the desert. There's nothing like it.

Indeed the river is a perpetual gala, and boasts each month a new ornament.

The desert is an ocean in which no oar is dipped.

An old-growth forest, a mountain range or a river valley is more important and certainly more loveable than any country will ever be.

... the desert, where there is the communal book of moonlight. We were among the rumour of wells. In the palace of winds.

Dawn rose from the desert and turned the river to wine.

When I found the beautiful white bones in the desert I picked them up and took them home too...I have used these things to say what is to me the wideness and wonder of the world as I live in it.

Silver flow the streams from Celos to Erui In the green fields of Lebennin! Tall grows the grass there. In the wind from the Sea The white lilies sway, And the golden bells are shaken of mallos and alfirin In the green fields of Lebennin, In the wind from the Sea!

I wish I had a river I could skate away on?

Who publishes the sheet-music of the winds or the music of water written in river-lines?

Or like the snow falls in the river, A moment white-then melts for ever . . .

The Sahara was a spectacle as alive as the sea. The tints of the dunes changed according to the time of day and the angle of the light: golden as apricots from far off, when we drove close to them they turned to freshly made butter; behind us they grew pink; from sand to rock, the materials of which the desert was made varied as much as its tints.

May the countryside and the gliding valley streams content me. Lost to fame, let me love river and woodland.

Sweet to me was not the voice of man, But the wind's voice was understood by me. The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul, But I loved the silver willow best of all.

She was as forthright and simple as the winds that blew over Tara and the yellow river that wound around it.

...you find yourself studying the fine colors on the river, you feel wonder and awe at the setting of the sun, and you are filled with a hard, aching love for how the world could be and always should be, but now is not.

I went into the desert to forget about you. But the sand was the color of your hair. The desert sku was the color of your eyes. There was nowhere I could go that wouldn't be you.

Only the desert has a fascination--to ride alone--in the sun in the forever unpossessed country--away from man. That is a great temptation.

The desert sharpened the sweet ache of his longing, amplified it, gave shape to it in sere geology and clean slant of light.

Why should not our whole life and its scenery be actually thus fair and distinct? All our lives want a suitable background. They should at least, like the life of the anchorite, be as impressive to behold as objects in a desert, a broken shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon.