Desert Landscapes Quotes

As geographers, Sosius, crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts, and unapproachable bogs.

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.

My favorite place to go is Zabriskie Point in Death Valley. If you see it at sunrise and sunset, it's like you're on Mars.

All the earth colours of the painter's palette are out there in the many miles of badlands.

Before I lived in America, my husband and I did a Californian road trip. We took a month, starting off in L.A. I love the landscapes of California: one moment you're in the desert, the next you're up in the Napa Valley or by the water in Big Bear.

I read Gide's 'The Immoralist' over and over as a teenager. I was obsessed with it. It's written with such simplicity and dread, and the desert, the shabby colonial world, is brought right into your consciousness without being over-explained.

I dream of the realization of the unity of Africa, whereby its leaders combine in their efforts to solve the problems of this continent. I dream of our vast deserts, of our forests, of all our great wildernesses.

My grandpa was a big cowboy in his values and the way he lived his life. For our family, the ranch represented our family time when we got to drive down through all that desert farmland and Grandpa would wake us up at 5 A.M. to feed the horses if we wanted to earn the right to ride them later. I always had so much fun.

Over the years, I've spent time in Saudi Arabia, the Bekaa Valley, Afghanistan, Jordan, and Kenya, among other vacation hotspots.

I grew up with landscape as a recourse, with the possibility of exiting the horizontal realm of social relations for a vertical alignment with earth and sky, matter and spirit. Vast open spaces speak best to this craving, the spaces I myself first found in the desert and then in the western grasslands.

I've had a love affair with the desert ever since I can remember. No matter what I wrote - contemporary romance, spy thriller, high fantasy - it was going to have a desert in it.

All three of the Abrahamic religions were born and nurtured in arid, disturbed environments.

Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time. Anything erected there, a city, a pyramid, a motel, stands outside time. It's no coincidence that religious leaders emerge from the desert. Modern shopping malls have much the same function. A future Rimbaud, Van Gogh or Adolf Hitler will emerge from their timeless wastes.

Forests, which I think do contain a lot mystery and traditionally are the setting for lawlessness and magic and what is outside of the rational to some degree, are still something more finite. I guess the desert and its crushing sense of infinite space is part of its connection to the mystical - on top of making you dehydrated and therefore primed for visions.

In the American Southwest, I began a lifelong love affair with a pile of rock.

Wyman's overpopulated universe is in many ways unlovely. It offends the aesthetic sense of us who have a taste for desert landscapes.

I love Morocco - it's a real challenge to all five senses. You think you know something, and you don't. It's wonderful. It keeps you on your toes that way.

I miss California... I love driving.

Morocco is such a beautiful place. It's incredibly beautiful. And also it is captivating place because for a writer, you feel that you make impact.

I would love to go to Iran. The island of Madagascar, everyone says is pretty exotic, or the wonderful Namibian desert.

Going up north with the redwoods and driving along the coast, it's got everything, man. It's got the desert, the mountains, and the ocean. It's beautiful.

Separate from the pleasure of your company, I don't much care if I never see another mountain in my life.

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

It's strange how deserts turn us into believers. I believe in walking in a landscape of mirages, because you learn humility. I believe in living in a land of little water because life is drawn together. And I believe in the gathering of bones as a testament to spirits that have moved on. If the desert is holy, it is because it is a forgotten place that allows us to remember the sacred. Perhaps that is why every pilgrimage to the desert is a pilgrimage to the self.

I love the Middle East. My earliest childhood memories are of Jerusalem. I love the colors and smells and cadence of Arabic spoken in the streets of Cairo or Beirut. I also love the modernity and verve of Tel Aviv.