Waris Dirie Quotes

How are we to live with the desert, in the desert, within the desert?

As a matter of fact, an ordinary desert supports a much greater variety of plants than does either a forest or a prairie.

Teach a child to play solitaire, and she'll be able to entertain herself when there's no one around. Teach her tennis, and she'll know what to do when she's on a court. But raise her to feel comfortable in nature, and the whole planet is her home.

I don't see the desert as barren at all; I see it as full and ripe. It doesn't need to be flattered with rain. It certainly needs rain, but it does with what it has, and creates amazing beauty.

I can cook because my life depended on it when I lived in Thailand. Either I learnt cooking, or I learnt how it felt to starve. I chose cooking.

If you help a chicken out of an egg, most of the time that bird will die. If you help a moth out of a cocoon, it'll die because they don't go through that struggle and maturation. I can give you a fish for the day and you'll eat a day, but if I teach you to fish, you'll eat for a lifetime. Maybe even start a business.

You've got to be able to adapt to your environment.

When you've been around a snake long enough, you learn how to crawl in the dirt.

Why do I live in the desert? Because the desert is the *locus Dei*.

Water, water, water....There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be.

Some of us who live in arid parts of the world think about water with a reverence others might find excessive.

I think that everybody does hustle in order to survive. That doesn't mean lying - it's more about how you handle situations.

Take the best out of everything and adapt it to your needs.

Live in the world you inhabit. Look upon things as they are. Take them as you find them. Make the best of them. Turn them to your advantage.

Embrace your constraints.

Live like a mud-fish: its skin is bright and shiny even though it lives in mud.

It’s tempting to wish for the perfect boss, the perfect parent, or the perfect outfit. But maybe the best any of us can do is not to quit, play the hand we’ve been dealt, and accessorize what we’ve got.

Make it work

Survival is an art. It requires the dulling of the mind and the senses, and a delicate attunement to waiting, without insisting on precision about just what it is you are waiting for.

And tar is washing up onto the beaches - big globs of tar. And people are saying, 'Is that going to ruin our summer at the beach?' No, of course not. You take the big blobs of tar and you use them to hold down your blanket.

Eating any of these things, goat testicles or what have you, isn't going to be nice, but you get into that zone, you become focussed and you do what you need to do. It's all about one thing: coming home in one piece.

most of us, as we undergo the growing up process, do not get what we want or even what we should. We get what we have, and no more, and we find out how to make what we have work for us.

I'm trained to difficulties; difficulties can't be eliminated from life.

All places that the eye of heaven visits Are to a wise man ports and happy havens. Teach thy necessity to reason thus; There is no virtue like necessity.

Water is the true wealth in a dry land.