…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. - Wilfred Thesiger

..I was thankful that I had not gone there with members of my own race, as one of large, meticulously organised expedition. I should have hated, in those surroundings, to listen to the wireless, the news, sports commentaries and European music; it would have seemed utterly incongruous. All I ever want to bring with me from our civilisation are some books, and those that I had, though there had been little opportunity to read them. In Arabia I had learnt to move from one world to another as easily as changing clothes, but always tried to keep the worlds apart.

I believe that most men have an inborn desire to hunt and kill and that even today this primitive urge has only been eradicated in a small minority of the human race.

For this was the real desert where differences of race and colour, of wealth and social standing, are almost meaningless; where coverings of pretence are stripped away and basic truths emerge.