Quote: Freya Stark ...

We sat there side by side in companionable silence, and I began to wonder again, as I had done through the night, but this time without anger—why I, and so many others like me, should find ourselves in these recondite places. We like our life intensified, perhaps. Travel does what good novelists also do to the life of everyday, placing it like a picture in a frame or gem in its setting, so that the intrinsic qualities are made more clear. Travel does this with the very stuff that everyday life is made of, giving to it the sharp contour and meaning of art….Most people anyway try to avoid having their feelings intensified: for indeed one must be strong to place oneself alone against the impact of the unknown world.

-- from Riding to the Tigris, 1959