No human pursuit achieves dignity unless it can be called work, and when you can experience a physical loneliness for the tools of your trade, you see that the other things - the experiments, the irrelevant vocations, the vanities you used to hold - were false to you.
Beryl MarkhamA map in the hands of a pilot is a testimony of a man's faith in other men; it is a symbol of confidence and trust. It is not like a printed page that bears mere words, ambiguous and artful, and whose most believing reader - even whose author, perhaps - must allow in his mind a recess for doubt. A map says to you, 'Read me carefully, follow me closely, doubt me not.' It says, 'I am the earth in the palm of your hand. Without me, you are alone and lost.
Beryl MarkhamAfrica is less a wilderness than a repository of primary and fundamental values, and less a barbaric land than an unfamiliar voice
Beryl MarkhamYou can live a lifetime and at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself.
Beryl MarkhamAfrica is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer's paradise, a hunter's Valhalla, an escapist's Utopia. It is what you will, and it withstands all interpretations. It is the last vestige of a dead world or the cradle of a shiny new one. To a lot of people, as to myself, it is just 'home'. It is all these things but one thing - it is never dull.
Beryl Markham