Quotes from Bruce Chatwin

As the young have discovered, the secret divinity of the twentieth century is Science. But Science is incapable of forming character. The more people talk of human sciences, the less effect human sciences have on man.

You're saying that man "makes" his territory by naming the "things" in it?

The Bushmen, who walk distances across the Kalahari, have no idea of the soul's survival in another world. 'When we die, we die,' they say. 'The wind blows away our foot prints, and that is the end of us.' Sluggish and sedentary peoples, such as the Ancient Egyptians – with their concept of an afterlife journey through the Field of Reeds – project on to the next world the journeys they failed to make in this one.

Fino a quando, Signore, fino a quando? ... "Finché non siano devastate le città...". I Profeti confidavano in un Giorno della Restaurazione, in cui gli Ebrei sarebbero ritornati al frugale ascetismo della vita nomade.

The word story is intended to alert the reader to the fact that, however closely the narrative may fit the facts, the fictional process has been at work.