Zitat des Tages von Robyn Davidson:
People who wander are nicer to be with. Movement militates against hoarding possessions and against bigotry, because you are constantly moving across boundaries and having to negotiate with people.
Its highest point was The Worst Journey in the World. Then you see this decline, and this harking back, using the 19th-century form when we're not in the 19th century. That way of writing a book about the world out there - you just can't do it anymore.
After thirty years of being 'the camel lady,' believe me: One becomes inured to the spotlight.
You apply the skills you use to produce your own book to make an anthology. Shaping. Rhythm.
I do believe that the genre reached its peak before the First World War.
I love the desert and its incomparable sense of space.
That odd idea that one person can go to a foreign part and in this rather odd voice describe it to the folks back home doesn't make much sense in the post-colonial world.
The two important things I did learn were that you are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of any endeavor is taking the first step, making the first decision.
In every religion I can think of, there exists some variation on the theme of abandoning the settled life and walking one's way to godliness. The Hindu sadhu, the pilgrims of Compostela walking past their sins, the circumambulators of the Buddhist kora, the haj.
As we've lost this idea of pilgrimage, we've lost this idea of human beings walking for a very, very long time. It does change you.
My own memories are packed tightly away. I very rarely bring them out for viewing.
I think a lot of writers are unrealistic about having their books translated into film.
There are worse things than being called 'the camel lady,' I suppose.
The truth is I'm not really interested in travel writing as it's generally conceived, and even less so in female travel writing.
The genre has moved into this commercial aspect of itself, and ignored this extraordinarily rich literature that's filed everywhere else except under travel.
Some instinct - and I think it was a correct one - led me to do something difficult enough to give my life meaning.
I don't want to be bored; I don't want to be with someone I don't respect.
When I was young, I thought I wouldn't be a good mother. Now I think I would be, but I'm too long in the tooth.
The desert is natural; when you are out there, you can get in tune with your environment, something you lose when you live in the city.
When 'Tracks' first came out, I was courted by Sydney Pollack. I had lunch with him, and he opened the conversation with, 'Honey, you ain't gonna like what I'm gonna do to your book.' I really liked him, but I turned him down, because - well, I was stupid. I also turned down a great deal of money.
That arrogance of youth and that kind of ignorant confidence can get you through a whole lot of things, and then life does its stuff, and you get smashed around and beaten up. You get full of doubts, and you end up making a person out of those bits and pieces.
Think for yourself. Act for yourself. Find out what you're capable of.
The French word for wanderlust or wandering is 'errance.' The etymology is the same as 'error.' So to wander is to make mistakes. In other words, to make mistakes, to make errors is sort of the idea of learning through trial and error, allowing the mistakes to be part of the process.
It is always interesting being on films sets - I have done it before with other actor friends - and I just find it fascinating. I just love that collaborative film family that develops around a project.
I'm not one of those true writers who can't bear not to be writing. Yet it's one of the most important things in my life.
I do not mean to say that we should, or could, return to traditional nomadic economies. I do mean to say that there are systems of knowledge and grand poetical schemata derived from the mobile life that it would be foolish to disregard or underrate. And mad to destroy.
As you get older, you do just get tired.
You really can expand the boundaries of your life and do risky things and prove yourself by doing them.
Some of the best conversations I've had are sitting around a camp fire.
Of course, in India, I always said, 'Oh yes, I'm married.'
If you are fragmented and uncertain, it is terrifying to find the boundaries of yourself melt.
During these last ten thousand years, we have made massive, unprecedented changes to the environment, creating problems for ourselves that we may not be able to solve.