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1 " In the evening [the Iraqi interim governor of Maysan province] asked me for fifty dollars to repair his windows, which had been destroyed in a recent demonstration. Although he was the governor, his salary was only four hundred and fifty dollars a month, and Baghdad had still not agreed to give the governors an independent budget.... For the sake of a tiny sum of money - a couple thousand dollars a month from the hundred billion we had spent on the invasion - we were alienating our key partner and successor. p. 264 "
― Rory Stewart , The Prince of the Marshes: And Other Occupational Hazards of a Year in Iraq
2 " I went to watch the Buzkasgu game taking place on a series of fields - some fallow, some plowed and planted- just to the east of the empty Buddha niches. Buzkashi is a form of polo played with a dead goat instead of a ball. "
― Rory Stewart
3 " The question shouldn't be what we ought to do, but what we can do. "
4 " Finally a soldier marched in and, holding his right hand to his chest, said, "Salaam aleikum. Chetor hastid? Jan-e-shoma jur ast? Khub hastid? Sahat-e-shoma khub ast? Be khair hastid? Jur hastid? Khane kheirat ast? Zinde bashi."Which in Dari, the Afghan dialect of Persian, means, "Peace be with you. How are you? Is your soul healthy? Are you well? Are you well? Are you healthy? Are you fine? Is your household flourishing? Long life to you." Or: "Hello. "
― Rory Stewart , The Places in Between
5 " Religions . . . seem to avoid mountain passes. "
6 " Man's life is brief and transitory, Literature endures forever "
7 " I had been walking one afternoon in Scotland and thought: Why don't I just keep going? There was, I said, a magic in leaving a line of footprints stretching across Asia. "
8 " I thought about evolutionary historians who argued that walking was a central part of what it meant to be human. Our two-legged motion was what first differentiated us from the apes. It freed our hands for tools and carried us onthe long marches out of Africa. As a species, we colonized the world on foot. Most of human history was created through contacts conducted at walking pace, even when some rode horses. I thought of the pilgrimages to Compostela in Spain; to Mecca; to the source of the Ganges; and of wandering dervishes, sadhus; and friars who approached God on foot. The Buddha meditated by walking and Wordsworth composed sonnets while striding beside the lakes.Bruce Chatwin concluded from all this that we would think and live better and be closer to our purpose as humans if we moved continually on foot across the surface of the earth. I was not sure I was living or thinking any better. "
9 " My feet beat out a steady muffled rhythm. My thoughts participated in each step, never getting ahead of me. "
10 " I wondered if walking was not a form of dancing. "
11 " Unlike most travel writers, he [Babur] is honest. "
12 " In the mountains, travelers were reduced to the speed of men on foot. Here, the ancient English sense of journey, 'a day's travel' (French journee), meant the same as the Old Persian word farsang, 'the distance a man could travel on foot in a day,' and the territory was in effect ungovernable. "
13 " I recited and followed this song-of-the-places-in-between as a map. "
14 " If democracy is to be rebuilt … it is necessary not just for the public to learn to trust their politicians, but for the politicians to learn to trust the public. "
15 " Genghis Khan's 'arrow messengers' could travel 450 kilometers a day. "
16 " Everyone had memorized a chant of names and villages along footpaths in every direction. This was a very useful map. "
17 " Perhaps it is because no one requires more than a charming illusion of action in the developing world. If policy makers know little about Afghanistan, the public knows even less, and few care about policy failure when the effects are felt only in Afghanistan. "
18 " He [Babur] was a type of mastiff, bred to fight against wolves, dogs, and humans. . . . The mastiff is perhaps the oldest breed of dog in the world. . . . The dogs of Ghor . . . were always regarded as particularly special mastiffs. . . . 'so powerful that in frame and strength every one of them is a match for a lion. "
19 " As we walked past a quad bike chained to a farm gate, he remarked "It's such a pity how times have changed. You can't leave a piece of machinery out on the road any more." He seemed to have forgotten that he had just been describing a time when you couldn't leave you cattle out. "
― Rory Stewart , The Marches: A Borderland Journey Between England and Scotland
20 " The owl loves its nest in the ruins, The Huma revels in making kings, The falcon will not leave the King’s hand, And the wagtail pleads weakness.2 "
