Quotes from Amanda Vaill

how to write truly and having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes part of the experience of the person who reads it.

In a road-mender's hut near Vézelay they found a message scrawled on the wall: "La vie est un desert, la femme un chameau. Pour voir le desert il faut monter sur le chameau." ("Life is a desert, woman is a camel. If you want to see the desert you have to ride the camel.")

There can be no compromise, no truce," the general told Allen then. "I shall advance. I shall take the capital. I will save Spain from marxism at whatever cost." "That means," Allen asked, for clarification, "that you will have to shoot half Spain?" Franco smiled. "I said whatever the cost." The Spanish Civil War had begun.

Le Bal du comte d'Orgel.

We have always believed it good to leave a place before it leaves you.