Robyn Davidson
Some of the best conversations I've had are sitting around a camp fire.
You have to remember that I was an Australian girl of the Fifties and Sixties. For Australians at that time, it was imperative to get out of the country and discover the world.
The idea of finding things out, I hope that will stay with me until I drop.
Thank God for being a writer, because you do sort of find out what you think by the process of writing.
I think people are frightened by different things, so I don't see myself as particularly courageous.
Australia's arid western region, from the town of Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean coast, is a beautiful, haunting, but largely empty land. Dominated by the harsh, almost uninhabited Great Sandy and Gibson deserts, the region is known only to Australian Aborigines, a handful of white settlers, and the few travelers who motor across it.
At the age of 25, I gave up my study of Japanese language and culture at university in Brisbane and moved to the town of Alice Springs.
To be free one needs constant and unrelenting vigilance over one's weaknesses. A vigilance which requires a moral energy most of us are incapable of manufacturing. We relax back into the moulds of habit. They are secure, they bind us and keep us contained at the expense of freedom. To break the moulds, to be heedless of the seductions of security is an impossible struggle, but one of the few that count. To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble.Collection: Inspirational
The two things I did learn were that you are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of any endeavor is taking the first step, making the first decision.Collection: Life
And there are new kinds of nomads, not people who are at home everywhere, but who are at home nowhere. I was one of themCollection: Home
I believe when you’re stuck in one spot for too long it’s best to throw a grenade where you stand, and jump…and pray.Collection: Travel
The good Lord in his ultimate wisdom gave us three things to make life bearable: hope, jokes, and dogs, but the greatest of these was dogs.Collection: Life
When there is no one to remind you what society's rules are, and there is nothing to keep you linked to that society, you had better be prepared for some startling changes.Collection: Be Prepared
I experienced that sinking feeling you get when you know you have conned yourself into doing something difficult and there's no going back.Collection: Sinking Feeling
By now I was utterly deprogrammed. I walked along naked usually, clothes being not only putrid but unnecessary. My skin had been baked a deep terra-cotta brown and was the constituency of harness leather. The sun no longer penetrated it. I retained my hat.Collection: Clothes
Real travel would be to see the world, for even an instant, with another's eyesCollection: Real
The most difficult part of any endeavour is taking the first step, making the first decision.Collection: Travel
I believe that the subconscious always knows what is best. It is our conditional, vastly overrated rational mind which screws everything up.Collection: Believe
Some of us just don't want to be famous ... anonymity cannot be bought for any price, once you have lost it.Collection: Want
There are some moments in life that are like pivots around which your existence turns—small intuitive flashes, when you know you have done something correct for a change, when you think you are on the right track. I watched a pale dawn streak the cliffs with Day-glo and realized this was one of them. It was a moment of pure, uncomplicated confidence—and lasted about ten seconds.Collection: Thinking
Camel trips, as I suspected all along, and as I was about to have confirmed, do not being or end: they mere change form.Collection: Camels
The 70s were a wonderful time to be young. I think most young people at that time were pushing the boundaries, asking all sorts of questions of society, of life and of themselves. They were very politicised. It was part of the air that we breathed.Collection: Thinking
I hate hats! Hats just give you really bad hair! I had a hat sometimes. Frankly, you get burnt so much anyway, it's beside the point. And when you're walking into the western sun, no hat in the world is going to save your face and neck from being sizzled.Collection: Hate
It is better to proceed with one's duty in the service of others than wallow in the pain attachments bringCollection: Pain