Richard Francis Burton Quotes

No land suits Arab tribesmen except that which suits their camels.

I've been on camels before, lumbering slowly through the desert - not hugely exciting, but I enjoyed the 'Lawrence of Arabia' vibe.

The Sahara is Africa's great divide.

We were in the Arabian Desert for nine months. And I was having the time of my life. It could have been an archeological expedition, a military expedition.

As you wake up to sort of Morocco coming to life, and you drive a two hour journey through the desert as the sun is rising over the sand dunes... I saw landscapes and visual stuff that I'll never forget. It was special.

I'm working on a very long series of paintings based on desert folklore.

Finding shelter with nomads in the desert during summer was a matter of survival for me and my animals.

Sedentary people [city people] have become used to laziness and ease. They find full assurance of safety in the walls that surround them. The Bedouins have no gates and walls. They always carry weapons. They watch carefully all sides of the road. They take hurried naps only ….They pay attention to every barking and noise. Fortitude has become a character quality of theirs, and courage their nature.

Bedouin ways were hard even for those brought up to them, and for strangers, terrible: a death in life.

The craziest place I've probably ever visited while filming would have to be Jordan. I did a small test shoot for a test movie. We arrived in Jordan, and we stayed in Amman for a night. Then we drove down for three hours into the middle of the Wadi Rum Desert, which is in the absolute middle of nowhere. It was insane.

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

I would go out into the desert. The desert was my teacher. I didn't know about gurus and wise people-I wasn't a reader.

If Camels are the ship of the dessert, this one is the Titanic

Desert, in generally, is a very good place to find yourself. Or lose yourself.

The desert was held in a crazed communism by which Nature and the elements were for the free use of every known friendly person for his own purposes and no more.

This desert town was man's own miracle of pure purposelessness.

But the nomads were the terror of all those whom the soil or the advantages of the market had induced to build towns. Agriculture therefore was a religious injunction, because of the perils of the state from nomadism.

The knowledge that refuge is available, when and if needed, makes the silent inferno of the desert more easily bearable. Mountains complement desert as desert complements city, as wilderness complements and completes civilization.

I worked in your orchards of peaches and prunes. I slept on the ground in the light of the moon. On the edge of the city you'll see us and then, we come with the dust and we go with the wind.

I have friends who have a normal family, kids and a dog, and I think I would blow my brains out. It's fine for them. But I'm such a free spirit, I feel more alive when I've got somewhere to go.

We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still.

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel's sake. The great affair is to move; to feel the needs and hitches of our life more nearly; to come down off this feather-bed of civilisation, and find the globe granite underfoot and strewn with cutting flints.

I live out of a bag. I just looked at what's going on for me, I'm not gonna be back in England for more than a week between now and March of next year, I think, which is crazy. By that time the lease is up on my apartment! I'm getting a kick out of being homeless.

I love moving around from town to town. I never got on a train in my life without my spirits rising.