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“They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger�� they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor�� They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace.”
― Tacitus, The Agricola and The Germania

“Deserts possess a particular magic, since they have exhausted their own futures, and are thus free of time. Anything erected there, a city, a pyramid, a motel, stands outside time. It's no coincidence that religious leaders emerge from the desert. Modern shopping malls have much the same function. A future Rimbaud, Van Gogh or Adolf Hitler will emerge from their timeless wastes.”
― J.G. Ballard, The Atrocity Exhibition

“The world is a wide place where we stumble like children learning to walk. The world is a bright mosaic where we learn like children to see, where our little blurry eyes strive greedily to take in as much light and love and colour and detail as they can.

The world is a coaxing whisper when the wind lips the trees, when the sea licks the shore, when animals burrow into earth and people look up at the sympathetic stars. The world is an admonishing roar when gales chase rainclouds over the plains and whip up ocean waves, when people crowd into cities or intrude into dazzling jungles.

What right have we to carry our desperate mouths up mountains or into deserts? Do we want to taste rock and sand or do we expect to make impossible poems from space and silence? The vastness at least reminds us how tiny we are, and how much we don't yet understand. We are mere babes in the universe, all brothers and sisters in the nursery together. We had better learn to play nicely before we're allowed out..... And we want to go out, don't we? ..... Into the distant humming welcoming darkness.”
― Jay Woodman, SPAN

“it wont be long now it wont be long
man is making deserts of the earth
it wont be long now
before man will have used it up
so that nothing but ants
and centipedes and scorpions
can find a living on it
....
what man calls civilization
always results in deserts
....
men talk of money and industry
of hard times and recoveries
of finance and economics
but the ants wait and the scorpions wait
for while men talk they are making deserts all the time
getting the world ready for the conquering ant
drought and erosion and desert
because men cannot learn
....
it wont be long now it wont be long
till earth is barren as the moon
and sapless as a mumbled bone”
― Don Marquis, Archy Does His Part

“i can’t always tell
what’s better

long drives
in the star-spangled deserts

or long walks
along winding tea gardens.”
― Sanober Khan, A touch, a tear, a tempest

“I almost moved mountains, touched rivers, impressed deserts and motivated skies, but I never made it to your heart.”
― M.F. Moonzajer, LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS

“The desert preserves. What other lands destroy, the desert keeps. It accepts dead things, holds them close, and draws away the rot that would destroy; given time, it mummifies or crystalizes.”
― Louis L'Amour, Callaghen

“How often have I painted a splendid picture of a journey marked by courageous ascents and daring desert crossings when all along all I’ve really been doing is running?”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“Sometimes it takes a mountain---sometimes a troubled sea; sometimes it takes a desert--to get a hold of me. Your love is so much Stronger than whatever troubles me---Sometimes it takes a mountain to Trust You and Believe.”
― Mark Mathes, writer

“If not prevented, desertification of the world can one day make the camels as the best and the sole cars of our civilisation!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Hell must look very beautiful to find customers for itself, and deserts do precisely this!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“We passed the great arid deserts of the West, driving through canyons and beneath rocky outcroppings and over great crevasses. We drove through the Mojave Desert, Owens Valley and Death Valley, and the dust entered our bloodstream and flowed through to every part of our body. The West was both eerie and breathtakingly beautiful, and we wanted to live there forever.”
― Karl Wiggins, Wrong Planet - Searching for your Tribe

“If you want to know what surrealism means, watch the camel caravans traveling in the desert under the moonlight!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“The desert was a school, a school where each day, each hour, a final examination was offered, where failure meant death and the buzzards landed to correct the papers.”
― Louis L'Amour, Shalako

“People of deserts cannot know the importance of forests; to know this, one must first have sweet memories spent in the forests!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“All the deserts of the Earth combined, don't have enough sand to cover the darkness of this world.”
― Mladen Đorđević, Svetioničar - Pritajeno zlo

“take my words
read my poetry
make my thoughts
breathe life

why should
distances matter?

between us there
may be oceans
there may be
deserts between us

take my words
read my poetry
make my thoughts
breathe life.”
― Avijeet Das

“Why should
distances matter?
Between us there
may be oceans
There may be
deserts between us”
― Avijeet Das

“To picture the desert as a place where trees are capable of growing is an act of faith.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Song of a Nature Lover

“The journey of every ignorant and obedient society always ends up in the same place: In the desert!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“The rulers of the oppressive governments do not know the wonderful flowers that bloom in the deserts despite the most difficult conditions! Goodness, beauty, hope flourish even in the land of Satan!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“A night spent in the desert means a night spent in the space!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“The shadows of the deserts are so magical that we completely forget the owners of the shadows!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Not infrequently in the wide skies over Yuma and other parts of the arid Southwest, residents watch sheets of rain begin to unfurl from auspicious purple storm clouds, backlit by the sun. But the rain stops halfway, hanging mid-horizon like a magician's trick. Known as rain streamers or by their scientific name VIRGA, the half-sheets evaporate into the dry air before the rain can reach the ground.”
― Cynthia Barnett, Rain: A Natural and Cultural History

“There are no dawns like the dawns that come to desert lands, nor are there colors anywhere like the pastels of the wastelands. There is no atmosphere anywhere with half the sharp clarity of the desert air following a rain--and no land holds death so close, so ready, so waiting.

Now the rain was over, the dry washes had carried away the weight of water, their swift torrents running away to leave their sands once more exposed to the relentless heat of the sun. Only the desert plants were greener, and the countless tiny roots that lay just beneath the surface had drunk greedily of the sudden rush of desert water.

Nowhere is survival so sharply geared to the changes of weather. Seeds lie dormant, mixed with the sand; a little rain falls, and nothing happens, for the water that has fallen is not enough for the seed to sprout. Within the seed some delicate mechanism awaits sufficient water; then suddenly, when it comes, the seed sprouts and grows, other plants put out their quick leaves, and for the moment the desert is alive, glowing, beautiful.”
― Louis L'Amour, High Lonesome

“But deserts, even the driest and least inviting to animals and plants, contain subtle multitudes. And rather like silences (outside of vacuums) and as John Cage demonstrated with his famous 4'33" piece, they are often noisy with life.”
― Travis Elborough, Atlas of Vanishing Places: The Lost Worlds as They Were and as They are Today

“As day turns into night in the desert, the dreadful hell gives way to majestic space!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“And again there was the long road, as straight as an arrow through the shimmering wall of fog, and the sudden apparition of the solitary columns of Persepolis on the terrace that seemed surreally suspended high above the plains”
― Annemarie Schwarzenbach, Morte na Pérsia

“What were the present and future to him, he who did not fear the sandstorm? Did he know what fortune and misfortune mean, and what our tortured hearts called hope?”
― Annemarie Schwarzenbach, All the Roads Are Open: The Afghan Journey

“Everybody has a notion of what a desert should look like. Effective definitions of deserts vary according to the background of those doing the defining and the purpose of their enquiry. An artist’s approach to deserts may be different from the stance taken by a scientist although, broadly, the two usually overlap geographically. It may, or may not, be surprising to learn that no universally accepted definition of the term ‘desert�� exists.”
― Nick Middleton, Deserts: A Very Short Introduction