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"There can be few situations more fearful than breaking down in darkness on the highway leading to Casablanca. I have rarely felt quite so vulnerable or alone."
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Exlpore more Sensitivity quotes

"In our age it is not sex that raises its ugly head, but love."

"It seems my heart is made of tissue paper, I wish the world would handle it more delicately."

"I think no more than a week after I started writing I ran into the first block. It's hard to describe it in a way that will be understandable to anyone who is not a neurotic. I will try. All my life I have been haunted by the obsession that to desire a thing or to love a thing intensely is to place yourself in a vulnerable position, to be a possible, if not a probable, loser of what you most want. Let's leave it like that. That block has always been there and always will be, and my chance of getting, or achieving, anything that I long for will always be gravely reduced by the interminable existence of that block."

"I'm not sure. But there's something about the darkness, the stillness of this hour, I think, that creates a language of its own. There's a strange kind of freedom in the dark; a terrifying vulnerability we allow ourselves at exactly the wrong moment, tricked by the darkness into thinking it will keep our secrets. We forget that the blackness is not a blanket; we forget that the sun will soon rise. But in the moment, at least, we feel brave enough to say things we'd never say in the light."

"I found that the same softness which once made me a target now compelled people to trust me with their stories."

"Turns out rolling your eyes in a bar when 'Land Down Under' plays is like someone belching during the Star Spangled Banner in America."

"Despite the way she rallied, the haunted look in her eyes was enough to break him, as lost and lonely as an abandoned child's."

"What was worse, he couldn't tell her how much he thought he maybe might kinda sorta love her."

"I fear I have praised you too much too soon. Will I lose you in your shame of believing that you can never be what I think you are?"

"I embrace my sensitivity and let it enhance my joy every day."
Explore more quotes by Tahir Shah


"In moments of great uncertainty on my travels, I have always felt that something is protecting me, that I will come to no harm."


"My father never told us how the stories worked. He didn't reveal the layers, the nuggets of information, the fragments of truth and fantasy. He didn't need to -- because, given the right conditions, the stories activated, sowing themselves."


"Lured by the wilderness, and by the chance of spotting rare desert elephants, a few intrepid tourists make their way to the Skeleton Coast each year. It's just about as remote as any tourist destination on earth, but one that pays fabulous dividends."


"The very fact that a Frenchman was prepared, after tow minutes of conversation, to be so friendly towards anyone, especially one who had come from England, made me restless."


"Visit Cape Town and history is never far from your grasp. It lingers in the air, a scent on the breezy, an explanation of circumstance that shaped the Rainbow People. Stroll around the old downtown and it's impossible not to be affected by the trials and tribulations of the struggle. But, in many ways, it is the sense of triumph in the face of such adversity that makes the experience all the more poignant."


"I believe that Marrakech ought to be earned as a destination. The journey is the preparation for the experience. Reaching it too fast derides it, makes it a little less easy to understand."


"The ability to tell a good route from a terrible one is a valuable skill when leading an expedition. Unfortunately for us all, it was a skill I did not possess."


"The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it."
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