To wake in that desert dawn was like waking in the heart of an opal. ... See the desert on a fine morning and die - if you can!

To wake in that desert dawn was like waking in the heart of an opal. ... See the desert on a fine morning and die - if you can!

I will have no locked cupboards in my life.

All the earth is seamed with roads, and all the sea is furrowed with the tracks of ships, and over all the roads and all the waters a continuous stream of people passes up and down - traveling, as they say, for their pleasure. What is it, I wonder, that they go out to see?

We as outsiders can't differentiate between Sunni and Shi'ah, but leave it to them and they'll get over the difficulty by some kind of hanky panky, just as the Turks did, and for the present it's the only way of getting over it. I don't for a moment doubt that the final authority must be in the hands of the Sunnis, in spite of their numerical inferiority; otherwise you will have a mujtahid-run, theocratic state, which is the very devil.

I have fallen a hopeless victim to the Turk; he is the most charming of mortals.

...the holy men sat in an atmosphere reeking of antiquity, so thick with the dust of ages that you can't see through it -nor can they.