Tahir Shah Quotes

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.

Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.

My father looked on in disbelief, overwhelmed that his son had been taught to eat glass and relish it.

Stories are a communal currency of humanity.

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.

In India everything has a use and a value.

Previous journeys had taught me the danger of taking too much stuff.

For my father there was no sharper way to understand a country than by listening to its stories.