Wilfred Thesiger

"…I had learnt that the most effective way to spread a story was to tell it to one or two Arabs under a pledge of secrecy."

"I might have been homosexual if I was born in a different age but as it was I remained asexual."

"I craved for the past, resented the present, and dreaded the future."

"A cloud gathers, the rain falls, men live; the cloud disperses without rain, and men and animals die. In the deserts of southern Arabia there is no rhythm of the seasons, no rise and fall of sap, but …"

"No wonder that in this setting , during those impressionable years, I acquired lasting respect for tradition and veneration of the past. Here, too, from masters and boys alike, I learnt responsibility…"

"But we seldom spoke of sex, for starving men dream of food, not women, and our bodies were generally too tired to lust."

"The biggest misfortune in human history is the invention of the combustion engine. Cars and airplanes diminish the world, rob it of all its diversity. Young men who meet me want to know how they could…"

"My own tastes went, perhaps, too far to the other extreme. I loathed cars, aeroplanes, wireless and television, in fact most of our civilization's manifestations in the past fifty years, and was alway…"