Bruce Chatwin Quotes

Quotes about:

• Travel doesn't merely broaden the mind. It makes the mind.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Mind

  69 Copy quote

• Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Real, Home, Journey

  70 Copy quote

• I haven't got any special religion this morning. My God is the God of Walkers. If you walk hard enough, you probably don't need any other god.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Morning, Journey, Fog

  Bruce Chatwin (2003). “In Patagonia”, p.59, Penguin

  53 Copy quote

• Walking is a virtue, tourism is a deadly sin.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Travel, Journey, Hiking

  Bruce Chatwin (1990). “What Am I Doing Here?”, p.103, Penguin

  33 Copy quote

• To lose a passport was the least of one’s worries. To lose a notebook was a catastrophe.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Notebook, Worry, Passports

  "The Songlines". Book by Bruce Chatwin, 1987.

  59 Copy quote

• 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

  Fall, Animal, Journey

  Bruce Chatwin (2012). “The Songlines”, p.271, Random House

  32 Copy quote

• A Sufi manual, the Kashf-al-Mahjub, says that, towards the end of his journey, the dervish becomes the Way not the wayfarer, i.e. a place over which something is passing, not a traveller following his own free will.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Journey, Als, Way

  24 Copy quote

• For life is a journey through a wilderness

  Bruce Chatwin

  Journey, Life Is A Journey, Life Is

  Bruce Chatwin (1997). “Anatomy of Restlessness: Selected Writings 1969-1989”, p.77, Penguin

  21 Copy quote

• Even today, when an Aboriginal mother notices the first stirrings of speech in her child, she lets it handle the "things" of that particular country: leaves, fruit, insects and so forth. "We give our children guns and computer games," Wendy said. "They gave their children the land."

  Bruce Chatwin

  Mother, Country, Children

  "The Songlines". Book by Bruce Chatwin, 1987.

  36 Copy quote

• Music… is a memory bank for finding one’s way about the world.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Memories, World, Way

  Bruce Chatwin (2012). “The Songlines”, p.108, Random House

  27 Copy quote

• I climbed a path and from the top looked up-stream towards Chile. I could see the river, glinting and sliding through the bone-white cliffs with strips of emerald cultivation either side. Away from the cliffs was the desert. There was no sound but the wind, whirring through thorns and whistling through dead grass, and no other sign of life but a hawk, and a black beetle easing over white stones.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Wind, Rivers, White

  Bruce Chatwin (2003). “In Patagonia”, p.39, Penguin

  41 Copy quote

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

  Bruce Chatwin

  Biology, Aggressive, Animal Kingdom

  40 Copy quote

• Because they knew each other's thoughts, they even quarrelled without speaking.

  Bruce Chatwin

  25 Copy quote

• 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

  Home, Men, Desert

  Bruce Chatwin (2012). “The Songlines”, p.162, Random House

  21 Copy quote

• I pictured a low timber house with a shingled roof, caulked against storms, with blazing log fires inside and the walls lined with all the best books, somewhere to live when the rest of the world blew up.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Wall, Book, Fire

  Bruce Chatwin (2003). “In Patagonia”, p.27, Penguin

  20 Copy quote

• And when you look along the way we've come, there are spirals of vultures wheeling.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Looks, Way, Spirals

  Bruce Chatwin (2012). “The Songlines”, p.182, Random House

  26 Copy quote

• The song and the land are one.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Wise, Song, Land

  23 Copy quote

• When people start talking of man's inhumanity to man it means they haven't actually walked far enough.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Mean, Men, Talking

  27 Copy quote

• Proust, more perspicaciously than any other writer, reminds us that the 'walks' of childhood form the raw material of our intelligence.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Childhood, Raw Materials, Proust

  9 Copy quote

• It's an old sailor's idea that every ship has a rope with one end made fast to her bows and the other held by the loved ones at home.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Home, Ideas, Bows

  4 Copy quote

• Being lost in Australia gives you a lovely feeling of security.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Australia, Giving, Feelings

  1987 The Songlines, ch.10.

  6 Copy quote

• As you go along, you literally collect places. I'm fed up with going to places; I shan't go to anymore.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Feds, Fed Up

  19 Copy quote

• I slept in black tents, blue tents, skin tents, yurts of felt and windbreaks of thorns. One night, caught in a sandstorm in the Western Sahara, I understood Muhammed's dictum, 'A journey is a fragment of Hell.'

  Bruce Chatwin

  Night, Journey, Blue

  16 Copy quote

• Anything was better than to be loved for one's things.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Bruce Chatwin (1989). “Utz”, p.46, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

• Tyranny sets up its own echo-chamber.

  Bruce Chatwin

  Echoes, Tyranny, Chamber

  1988 Utz.

  6 Copy quote

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