Bruce Chatwin citations

“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'.”

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Bruce Chatwin livre The Songlines

Source: The Songlines

“To lose a passport was the least of one's worries. To lose a notebook was a catastrophe.”

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Bruce Chatwin livre The Songlines

The Songlines (Penguin, 1987, ISBN 0140094296, p. 160

“Walking is a virtue, tourism is a deadly sin.”

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Bruce Chatwin

Source: What Am I Doing Here?

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

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Bruce Chatwin

Source: On The Black Hill

“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.”

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Bruce Chatwin

“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."”

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Bruce Chatwin livre The Songlines

The Songlines (Penguin, 1987, ISBN 0140094296, p. 270