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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| fba9d9e | Most criminals are stupid. They creep $500,000 homes in the Garden District, load up two dozen bottles of gin, whiskey, vermouth, and Collins mix in a $2,000 Irish linen tablecloth and later drink the booze and throw the tablecloth away. | garden-district ireland new-orleans | James Lee Burke | |
| 4cb1621 | Who is America named after? Not the Italian merchant and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci, but Richard Ameryk, a Welshman and wealthy Bristol merchant. Ameryk was the chief investor in the second transatlantic voyage of John Cabot--the English name of the Italian navigator Giovanni Caboto, whose voyages in 1497 and 1498 laid the groundwork for the later British claim to Canada. He moved to London from Genoa in 1484 and was authorized by King H.. | John Lloyd | ||
| 4ac2458 | W]hen food is placed at the start and end points of the maze, the slime mold withdraws from the dead-end corridors and shrinks its body to a tube spanning the shortest path between food sources. The single-celled slime solves the maze in this way each time it is tested."23 Toshiyuki Nakagaki, the researcher conducting the study, commented that Even for humans it is not easy to solve a maze. But the plasmodium of true slime mold, an amoeba-l.. | Stephen Harrod Buhner | ||
| e906bf7 | There's no room for human rights in a government waiting room. | Stephen Clarke | ||
| 7a00fa4 | When a Quebecker is interviewed for French TV, he or she is often subtitled in 'normal' French, as if the language they speak in francophone Canada is so barbarous that Parisians won't be able to understand | Stephen Clarke | ||
| 5bc079c | Her hair was hidden under a white headdress, like some kind of wimple; she wore a long white tunic and trousers, and her skin had the pale golden hue associated in our world with Orientals. The lines of her cheekbone and jaw reminded him of pictures he had seen of the head of Nefertiti, thought her neck was longer, slightly too long for an ordinary human, and as she turned toward him he realized the planes of her face were subtly different,.. | Amanda Hemingway | ||
| 2103a9c | My father looked on in disbelief, overwhelmed that his son had been taught to eat glass and relish it. | illusion illusionists | Tahir Shah | |
| 31e6501 | A cross between a foreign legion boot-camp and a secret-society initiation ritual, the ordeals were grounded in pain. One thing was obvious: the agenda, which was dedicated to grave discomfort, had been drawn up by a passionate sadist. | pain sadism secret-society | Tahir Shah | |
| 6afff51 | Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood. With such a book the impact isn't necessarily obvious at first...but the more you read it and re-read it, and live with it, and travel with it, the more it speaks to you, and the more you realize that you cannot live without that book. It's then that the wisdom hidden inside, the seed, is passed on. | reading travel wisdom | Tahir Shah | |
| c553b11 | The porters could always be coaxed to continue a little further through driving rain by the mere suggestion of a Pot Noodle at the end. | endurance food | Tahir Shah | |
| 92b7d9a | Ours was not going to be a clone of the usual expeditions, oozing with sleekness. It was clear from the start that oddity was our advantage. | adventure expedition | Tahir Shah | |
| e9412de | The Occident has never found it easy to grasp the strange netherworld of spirits that followers of Islam universally believe exist in a realm overlaid our own. | spirits | Tahir Shah | |
| 86af00e | Everyone knows that even the best exorcism has to be renewed once in a while. | Tahir Shah | ||
| 905a7be | One senses that, in these conditions, no amount of wet-wiping could bring true hygiene. | travel | Tahir Shah | |
| 6f83794 | In any case, a little danger is a small price to pay for ridding a place of tourists. | tourism tourists | Tahir Shah | |
| 261aea1 | None of them seemed to mind sliding around in the faeces and choking in the smoke. They were determined not to miss the opportunity of watching a foreigner make a fool of himself. | foolishness foreigner | Tahir Shah | |
| f22a331 | I had learned years ago never to give original documents to anyone if I could help it. | travel | Tahir Shah | |
| 0b81fb9 | The first few hours in the cell were quite stimulating. I'd never been in a prison cell before and was quite enjoying the experience. | Tahir Shah | ||
| 5558bfa | When I am about to embark on a difficult journey, I comfort myself by reading the accounts of the great nineteenth-century travellers, men like Stanley, Burton, Speke, Burckhardt and Barth. | journey reading travel-writers | Tahir Shah | |
| d716fd0 | As far as Samson was concerned I was just another foreigner in pursuit of a lunatic quest. | journey lunatic question | Tahir Shah | |
| f00894e | Calcutta has spectacular over-employment. In the West, where we're obsessed with slashing the numbers of workers for the sake of it, we drool at the idea of more, faster computers, fewer humans. But as we struggle to adopt an ever-changing technology, we lose sight of the satisfaction that only a finely tuned human system can provide. | Tahir Shah | ||
| 44c16a8 | The very fact that a Frenchman was prepared, after tow minutes of conversation, to be so friendly towards anyone, especially one who had come from England, made me restless. | friends friendship travel | Tahir Shah | |
| 8141c4e | Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Sometimes the room would fill like a railway station at rush hour and I would be expected to cure widespread boredom. | india travel | Tahir Shah | |
| 4ef55fa | Foras Road has a sordid reputation (...) Old crones sat in doorways, while their daughters were pushed out to earn money. It is intriguing that a society which is very covert with sexuality should be so straightforward about prostitution. | india prostitutes travel travel-writing women | Tahir Shah | |
| 7db2421 | Osman and Prideep had been in my employment for some weeks. Every Friday I would take the to lunch. It was the high point of their calender. During the meal I would harangue them as a reminder of what they had been hired for: but my orations never seemed to increase their output. I realised later that, in the East, a commitment to produce does not automatically accompany employment. | india society values | Tahir Shah | |
| 928fa44 | Prideep pointed to the flames of paraffin lamps as they came alive in the distance and cackled in awe at the experience. (...) I was to discover that making tasty soup with one carrot, ten peas and a little dishwater, was his greatest skill. One wondered what the man would be capable of creating with a blender and a non-stick frying-pan. | gondwana gourmet india | Tahir Shah | |
| 52674ec | As far as I was concerned, a little danger of head-shrinking is a small price to pay in return for a people who have remained true to an ancient code. | danger | Tahir Shah | |
| b4b49dc | Experience has taught me the power of trophies. You may have every knick-knack and useless contraption ever devised, but while they weigh you down, a simple trophy can go a long, long way. | trophy | Tahir Shah | |
| f9bd70a | My journey to the land of the Shuar tribe had taught me the importance of practical gifts. | gifts journey shuar tribe | Tahir Shah | |
| 6204f78 | Moroccan traffic isn't like normal traffic. It's armed combat, a war of wills, in which only the very bravest have a chance to survive. | Tahir Shah | ||
| a50507d | In Morocco," said Osman, "word spreads like a fire tearing through the depths of Hell." | gossip | Tahir Shah | |
| f19c19c | The last thing we wanted was for the Machiguenga to be sad again. Sadness appeared to bring out their violence. | violence | Tahir Shah | |
| 4af15da | The inertia of a jungle village is a dangerous thing. Before you know it your whole life has slipped by and you are still waiting there. | inertia jungle time village | Tahir Shah | |
| 268696f | I struggled to think pure thoughts, as Hector sucked out my psyche with his eyes. | thoughts | Tahir Shah | |
| 427d291 | If hot food is they key to maintaining an expedition's stamina, then low grade gut-rot alcohol is the key to sustaining its sense of pleasure. | alcohol expedition food journey pleasure sustenance | Tahir Shah | |
| 7deae94 | Back at the guest house I tried to acclimatise. A travel-worn adventurer had once told me that leaning with one's head dangling over the end of a bed was the best way to achieve this. It was while I was in this position, the blood rushing to my temples, that the door swung open. | explorer india travel-writing | Tahir Shah | |
| d9ef0fc | I'm a fool, that I should simply trick the tourists like everyone else. after all, most of them will never come back. and what are tourists for but for tricking? | Tahir Shah | ||
| 349b526 | As the man was bundled into an armoured police van, he turned and shouted: 'Don't waste your life following others! Be individual! Live your dreams!' I stood there thinking. He was right. Ours is a society of followers, trapped by an island mentality. | individuality | Tahir Shah | |
| 148f40f | Mirabelle knows, and she lets this be unspoken, that all free things require conversation. Sitting in a darkened movie theatre requires absolutely no conversation at all, whereas a free date, like a walk down Hollywood Boulevard in the busy evening, requires comments, chatter, observations, and with luck, wit. She worries that since they have only exchanged perhaps two dozen words between them, these free dates will be horrible. | Steve Martin | ||
| c157f38 | No, no, I could never be a woman. I'd just stay at home and play with my breasts all day. | Steve Martin | ||
| 03d6d46 | She appears sunny, a quality that Mirabelle can call upon only for special occasions. | Steve Martin | ||
| 359785a | There is nothing too mysterious about Ray Porter, at least not in the usual sense of the word. He is single, he is kind, he tries to do the right thing, and he does not understand himself, or women, or his relationships with women. | Steve Martin | ||
| 1b771db | And after his unparsable response, including a passage where he said he was 'blurring the boundaries between a thing and thought,' she said, 'Thank you, I get lost sometimes,' while laying two fingers on his folded arm. | hilarious | Steve Martin | |
| 1d3ba8f | Enjoyment while performing was rare--enjoyment would have been an indulgent loss of focus that comedy cannot afford. After the shows, however, I experienced long hours of elation or misery depending on how the show went, because doing comedy alone onstage is the ego's last stand. | Steve Martin |