Quotes from The Songlines

“As a general rule of biology, migratory species are less 'aggressive' than sedentary ones.

There is one obvious reason why this should be so. The migration itself, like the pilgrimage, is the hard journey: a 'leveller' on which the 'fit' survive and stragglers fall by the wayside.

The journey thus pre-empts the need for hierarchies and shows of dominance. The 'dictators' of the animal kingdom are those who live in an ambience of plenty. The anarchists, as always, are the 'gentlemen of the road'.”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“Sluggish and sedentary peoples, such as the Ancient Egyptians-- with their concept of an afterlife journey through the Field of Reeds-- project on to the next world the journeys they failed to make in this one.”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert - then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison.”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“A journey is a fragment of Hell.”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“Sometimes, I overheard my aunts discussing these blighted destinies; and Aunt Ruth would hug me, as if to forestall my following in their footsteps. Yet, from the way she lingered over such words as 'Xanadu' or 'Samarkand' or the 'wine-dark sea,' I think she also felt the trouble of the 'wanderer in her soul.”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“Richard Lee calculated that a Bushman child will be carried a distance of 4,900 miles before he begins to walk on his own. Since, during this rhythmic phase, he will be forever naming the contents of his territory, it is impossible he will not become a poet.”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“Proust, more perspicaciously than any other writer, reminds us that the 'walks' of childhood form the raw material of our intelligence.”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“Fino a quando, Signore, fino a quando?... "Finché non siano devastate le città...". I Profeti confidavano in un Giorno della Restaurazione, in cui gli Ebrei sarebbero ritornati al frugale ascetismo della vita nomade.”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“[...] la selezione naturale ci ha foggiati - dalla struttura delle cellule cerebrali alla struttura dell'alluce - per una vita di viaggi stagionali a piedi in una torrida distesa di rovi o di deserto.
Se era così, se la "patria" era il deserto, se i nostri istinti si erano forgiati nel deserto, per sopravvivere ai suoi rigori - allora era facile capire perché i pascoli più verdi ci vengono a noia, perché le ricchezze ci logorano e perchè l'immaginario uomo di Pascal considerava i suoi confortevoli alloggi una prigione.”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“Quali sono, quindi le prime impressioni che un bimbo nomade ha del mondo? Un capezzolo dondolante e una cascata d'oro.”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“Al termine di una notte di luna un cane ulula e poi ammutolisce. La luce del fuoco tremola e la sentinella sbadiglia. Un uomo vecchissimo passa silenzioso davanti alle tende, e saggia il terreno con un bastone per accertarsi di non inciampare nelle corde tese. Poi prosegue. La sua gente si trasferisce in una regione più verde. Mosè si reca all'appuntamento con gli sciacalli e gli avvoltoi.”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“Un marabutto smise di pregare per interrogarmi.
"Esiste un popolo chiamato mericani?" chiese.
"Sì".
"Dicono che hanno visitato la luna".
"E' vero".
"Sono blasfemi".”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“Senza costrizione non si potrebbe fondare nessun insediamento. [...]”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“Pascal, in one of his gloomier pensées, gave it as his opinion that all our miseries stemmed from a single cause: our inability to remain quietly in a room. Why, he asked, must a man with sufficient to live on feel drawn to divert himself on long sea voyages? To dwell in another town? To go off in search of a peppercorn? Or go off to war and break skulls? Later, on further reflection, having discovered the cause of our misfortunes, he wished to understand the reason for them, he found one very good reason: namely, the natural unhappiness of our weak mortal condition; so unhappy that when we gave to it all our attention, nothing could console us. One thing alone could alleviate our despair, and that was ‘distraction’ (divertissement): yet this was the worst of our misfortunes, for in distraction we were prevented from thinking about ourselves and were gradually brought to ruin.”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“Life is a bridge. Cross over it, but build no house on it.”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“What am I doing here? Rimbaud writing home from Ethiopia”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“I think I would be happy in that place I happen not to be, and this question of moving house is the subject of a perpetual dialogue I have with my soul. Baudelaire, ‘Any Where Out of this World!”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“Poetry proper is never merely a higher mode (melos) of everyday language. It is rather the reverse: everyday language is a forgotten and therefore used-up poem, from which there hardly resounds a call any longer. Martin Heidegger, ‘Language”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

“Our fatal flaw, or Fall, he insisted, was to have developed ‘artificial weapons’ instead of natural ones. As a species, we thus lacked the instinctive inhibitions which prevented the ‘professional carnivores’ from murdering their fellows.”
― Bruce Chatwin, quote from The Songlines

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Popular quotes

“The lodging arrangements had certainly been inspired, though whether by an angel or an imp remained to be seen.”
― Ellis Peters, quote from A Morbid Taste for Bones

“Family isn't blood," she said bitterly, continuing to back away. "Family is who loves you, who takes care of you.”
― Bruce Coville, quote from Into the Land of the Unicorns

“I want to be married,” I blurted. “I want you to marry me.”
Fuuuuuuuck.
And so my entire carefully constructed speech was thrown out the window. My grandmother’s antique ring was in a box in the dresser—nowhere near me—and my plan to kneel and do everything right just evaporated.
In the circle of my arms, Chloe grew very still. “What did you just say?”
I had completely botched the plan, but it was too late to turn back now.
“I know we have only been together for a little over a year,” I explained, quickly. “Maybe it’s too soon? I understand if it’s too soon. It’s just that how you feel about the way we kiss? I feel that way about everything we do together. I love it. I love to be inside you, I love working with you, I love watching you work, I love fighting with you, and I love just sitting on the couch and laughing with you. I’m lost when I’m not with you, Chloe. I can’t think of anything, or anyone, who is more important to me, every second. And so for me, that means we’re already sort of married in my head. I guess I wanted to make it official somehow. Maybe I sound like an idiot?” I looked over at her, feeling my heart try to jackhammer its way up my throat. “I never expected to feel this way about someone.”
She stared at me, eyes wide and lips parted as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing. I stood and ran over to the dresser, pulling the box from the drawer and carrying it over to her. When I opened the box and let her see my grandmother’s antique diamond and sapphire ring, she clapped a hand over her mouth.
“I want to be married,” I said again. Her silence was unnerving, and fuck, I’d completely botched this with my rambling nonsense. “Married to you, I mean.”
Her eyes filled with tears and she held them, unblinking. “You. Are such. An ass.”
Well, that was unexpected. I knew it might be too soon, but an ass? Really? I narrowed my eyes. “A simple ‘It’s too soon’ would have sufficed, Chloe. Jesus. I lay my heart out on the—”
She pushed off the bed and ran over to one of her bags, rummaging through it and pulling out a small blue fabric bag. She carried it back to me with the ribbon hooked over her long index finger, and dangled the bag in my face.
I ask her to marry me and she brings me a souvenir from New York? What the fuck is that? “What the fuck is that?” I asked.
“You tell me, genius.”
“Don’t get smart with me, Mills. It’s a bag. For all I know you have a granola bar, or your tampons, in there.”
“It’s a ring, dummy. For you.”
My heart was pounding so hard and fast I half wondered if this was what a heart attack felt like. “A ring for me?”
She pulled a small box out of the bag and showed it to me. It was smooth platinum, with a line of coarse titanium running through the middle.
“You were going to propose to me?” I asked, still completely confused. “Do women even do that?”
She punched me, hard, in the arm. “Yes, you chauvinist. And you totally stole my thunder.”
“So, is that a yes?” I asked, my bewilderment deepening. “You’ll marry me?”
“You tell me!” she yelled, but she was smiling.
“Technically you haven’t asked yet.”
“Goddamnit, Bennett! You haven’t, either!”
“Will you marry me?” I asked, laughing.
“Will you marry me?”
With a growl, I took the box and dropped it on the floor, flipping her onto her back.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Beautiful Bitch

“For me hotness was a complicated matter involving brains, humor, and some other things, but all that aside, I was willing to admit Sean Evans was nice to look at.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Clean Sweep

“Não deve custar a morte a quem tiver o coração tranquilo. O pior é a saudade, saudade daquelas esperanças que tu achavas no meu coração.”
― Camilo Castelo Branco, quote from Amor de Perdição

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