Tahir Shah Quotes - Page 2

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Country Fathers Fear Home Imagination Journey Team

The backstreet cafe in Casablanca was for me a place of mystery, a place with a soul, a place with danger. There was a sense that the safety nets had been cut away, that each citizen walked upon the high wire of this, the real world. I longed not merely to travel through it, but to live in such a city.

Tahir Shah

Real, Cutting, Cities

Tahir Shah (2010). “The Caliph's House”, p.1, Random House

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The pursuit of illusion is not about studying for prizes, or for study's sake. There's no right or wrong, no pass or fail.

Tahir Shah

Sake, Study, Failing

Tahir Shah “Sorcerer's Apprentice, Dyslexic edition”, Lulu.com

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During the days I felt myself slipping into a kind of madness. Solitary confinement has an astonishing effect on the mind. The trip was to stay calm and keep myself occupied. I spent hours working out how to break free. But trying to escape would have been instant suicide.

Tahir Shah

Suicide, Work Out, Mind

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

Tahir Shah

Travel, Two, Friendly

Tahir Shah (2013). “Beyond the Devil's Teeth Paperback”, p.96, Lulu.com

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For me, nature is something you watch on the Discovery Channel, or on the evening news -- as you learn how much more of it's been savaged to make way for the Blackberry realm that is my home

Tahir Shah

Home, Discovery, Watches

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Back at the Chateau Windsor there was a rat-like scratching at the door of my room. Vinod, the youngest servant, came in with a soda water. He placed it next to the bag of toffees. Then he watched me read. I was used to being observed reading. Sometimes the room would fill like a railway station at rush hour and I would be expected to cure widespread boredom

Tahir Shah

Reading, Doors, Water

FaceBook post by Tahir Shah from Apr 17, 2013

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My father used to tell me that stories offer the listener a chance to escape but, more importantly, he said, they provide people with a chance to maximize their minds. Suspend ordinary constraints, allow the imagination to be freed, and we are charged with the capability of heighetned thought.
Learn to use your eyes as if they are your ears, he said, and you become connected with the ancient heritage of man, a dream world for the waking mind.

Tahir Shah

Dream, Father, Eye

FaceBook post by Tahir Shah from Sep 15, 2013

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There is nothing quite as unpleasant as wearing a pair of briefs which have been trailed through a Calcutta courtyard. Nothing, that is, except having one's elbows and knees lacerated by unseen slivers of glass and discarded razor blades.

Tahir Shah

Glasses, Unseen, Elbows

Tahir Shah “Sorcerer's Apprentice, Dyslexic edition”, Lulu.com

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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.

Tahir Shah

Fire, Ghouls, Skeletons

Tahir Shah (2013). “Sorcerer's Apprentice paperback”, p.39, Lulu.com

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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.

Tahir Shah

Fear, Darkness, Vulnerable

Tahir Shah (2009). “In Arabian Nights”, p.35, Random House

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There comes a stage at which a man would rather die cleanly by a bullet than by the unknown terror of the phantom in the forest.

Tahir Shah

Fear, Men, Bullets

Tahir Shah (2013). “House of the Tiger King, Dyslexic edition”, p.9, Lulu.com

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Spend sixteen weeks in the jungle and you being to question your own sanity, especially when you are the one goading everyone else ahead.

Tahir Shah

Travel, Team, Sixteen

Tahir Shah (2013). “House of the Tiger King, Dyslexic edition”, p.282, Lulu.com

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To be selfless, you would give charity anonymously, walj softly on the earth, and look out for others-even total strangers-before you look out for yourself. For the Arab mind, the self is an obstacle, an impediment, in humanity's quest foe real progress.

Tahir Shah

Real, Self, Giving

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A cross between a foreign legion boot-camp and a secret-society initiation ritual, the ordeals were grounded in pain. One thing was obvious: the agenda, which was dedicated to grave discomfort, had been drawn up by a passionate sadist.

Tahir Shah

Pain, Secret, Passionate

Tahir Shah (2013). “Sorcerer's Apprentice paperback”, p.92, Lulu.com

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Searching for a lost city is a particularly European obsession.

Tahir Shah

Cities, Obsession, Lost

Tahir Shah (2013). “House of the Tiger King, Dyslexic edition”, p.34, Lulu.com

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I was becoming addicted to Bombay. There was squalor and poverty, but I had begun to realise my good fortune and would never again forget it.

Tahir Shah

Travel, Poverty, Becoming

FaceBook post by Tahir Shah from Apr 15, 2013

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In some peculiar way, indeed, the rules were now beginning to seem quite logical. It was then I knew that I had been in India long enough.

Tahir Shah

Travel, Long, India

Tahir Shah (2013). “Beyond the Devil's Teeth Paperback”, p.117, Lulu.com

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Close your senses and the imagination comes alive. It's inside us all, dulled by endless television reruns and by a society that reins in fantasy as something not to be trusted, something to be purged. But it's in there, deep inside, a spark waiting to set a touch-paper alight.

Tahir Shah

Imagination, Waiting, Television

Tahir Shah (2009). “In Arabian Nights”, p.71, Random House

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In India everything has a use and a value.

Tahir Shah

India, Use, Values

FaceBook post by Tahir Shah from Apr 16, 2013

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Any man who has ever led an army, an expedition, or a group of Boy Scouts has sadism in his bones.

Tahir Shah

Army, Boys, Men

Tahir Shah (2013). “House of the Tiger King Paperback”, p.222, Lulu.com

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

Tahir Shah

Moments, Harm, Felt

Tahir Shah (2013). “In Search of King Solomon's Mines, paperback edition”, p.68, Lulu.com

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There’s nothing quite like a good quest for getting your blood pumping.

Tahir Shah

Travel, Blood, Quests

Tahir Shah “In Search of King Solomon's Mines, Dyslexic edition”, Lulu.com

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As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.

Tahir Shah

Travel, Fear, Hair

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In India an explanation is often more confusing than what prompted it.

Tahir Shah

Confusing, India, Explanation

FaceBook post by Tahir Shah from Apr 21, 2013

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Where does one go in a tremendous city like Calcutta to find insider information? I recalled India's golden rule: do the opposite of what would be normal anywhere else.

Tahir Shah

Travel, Opposites, Cities

Tahir Shah (2013). “Sorcerer's Apprentice paperback”, p.161, Lulu.com

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Born: November 16, 1966
Occupation: Author
Cite this Page: Citation

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