Best Robyn Davidson Quotes & Sayings

There are worse things than being called 'the camel lady,' I suppose. — Robyn Davidson

So I had made a decision which carried with it things that I could not articulate at the time. I had made the choice instinctively, and only later had given it meaning. The trip had never been billed in my mind as an adventure in the sense of something to be proved. And it struck me then that the most difficult things has been the decision to act, the rest had been merely tenacity
and the fears were paper tigers. One really could do anything one had decided to do whether it were changing a job, moving to a new place, divorcing a husband or whatever,m one really cold act to change and control one's life;and the procedure, the process, was its own reward. — Robyn Davidson

By taking to the road, we free ourselves of baggage, both physical and psychological. We walk back to our original condition, to our best selves. — Robyn Davidson

There are some moments in life that are like pivots around which your existence turns - small intuitive flashes, when you know you have done something correct for a change, when you think you are on the right track. I watched a pale dawn streak the cliffs with Day-glo and realized this was one of them. It was a moment of pure, uncomplicated confidence - and lasted about ten seconds. — Robyn Davidson

If you think of all the enduring stories in the world, they're of journeys. Whether it's 'Don Quixote' or 'Ulysses,' there's always this sense of a quest - of a person going away to be tested, and coming back. — Robyn Davidson

My thoughts can sometimes be spurred by what I read, but my reading is extremely eclectic. — Robyn Davidson

I could not get used to the idea of ther being classes of people inherently inferior to oneself, to whom one could be as odiously condescendign or downright brutal as one likes, yet with whom one lived as intimately as family. — Robyn Davidson

I had been sick of carrying around the self-indulgent negativity which was so much the malaise of my generation, my sex and my class. — Robyn Davidson

Camel trips, as I suspected all along, and as I was about to have confirmed, do not being or end: they mere change form. — Robyn Davidson

One continues to learn things in life, then promptly forget them. — Robyn Davidson

The question I'm most commonly asked is "Why?" A more pertinent question might be, why is it that more people don't attempt to escape the limitations imposed upon them? If Tracks has a message at all, it is that one can be awake to the demand for obedience that seems natural simply because it is familiar. Wherever there is pressure to conform (one person's conformity is often in the interests of another person's power), there is a requirement to resist. Of course I did not mean that people should drop what they were doing and head for the wilder places, certainly not that they should copy what I did. I meant that one can choose adventure in the most ordinary of circumstances. Adventure of the mind, or to use an old-fashioned word, the spirit. — Robyn Davidson

People who wander are nicer to be with. Movement militates against hoarding possessions and against bigotry, because you are constantly moving across boundaries and having to negotiate with people. — Robyn Davidson

'Tracks' is based on the book by Robyn Davidson who, in the mid-Seventies, decided to leave the city, go to the outback, learn to train camels and walk across the Australian desert to the ocean: a journey that is about two thousand miles and will take about six or seven months. — John Curran

It's important that we leave each other and the comfort of it, and circle away, even though it's hard sometimes, so that we can come back and swap information about what we've learnt even if what we do changes us and — Robyn Davidson

It is always interesting being on films sets - I have done it before with other actor friends - and I just find it fascinating. I just love that collaborative film family that develops around a project. — Robyn Davidson

The discomfort I felt under that moral pressure has stayed with me all my life and made me eternally wary of the blindness of ideological certainty. — Robyn Davidson

Life's the adventure. You don't have to drop your bundle and go bush. It's about being brave within the context that you're in. — Robyn Davidson

resort. Yes, exactly, only now, after all this time, I had discovered that the grenade was a dud, and I could hop right back to that same old spot which was safety. The excruciating thing was that those two selves were now warring with each other. I wanted desperately to find those camels, and I wanted desperately not to find them. The pilot snapped me back to the present dilemma. 'Well, what do you want to do? Shall — Robyn Davidson

You really can expand the boundaries of your life and do risky things and prove yourself by doing them. — Robyn Davidson

I believe when you're stuck in one spot for too long it's best to throw a grenade where you stand, and jump ... and pray. — Robyn Davidson

I made lists of lists of lists, then started all over again. And if I did something that wasn't on a list, I would promptly write it on one and cross it out, with the feeling of having at least accomplished something. — Robyn Davidson

Some of the best conversations I've had are sitting around a camp fire. — Robyn Davidson

I think a lot of writers are unrealistic about having their books translated into film. — Robyn Davidson

That to be free one needs constant and unrelenting vigilance over one's weaknesses. A vigilance which requires a moral energy most of us are incapable of manufacturing. We relax back into the moulds of habit. They are secure, they bind us and keep us contained at the expense of freedom. To break the moulds, to be heedless of the seductions of security is an impossible struggle, but one of the few that count. To be free is to learn, to test yourself constantly, to gamble. It is not safe. I had learnt to use my fears as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks, and best of all I had learnt to laugh. — Robyn Davidson

When God made the firs Raika, that man turned to God and said, "You're something else. You've given me two eyes, two ears, two feet, two hands but only one stomach. It isn't fair. Why did you do it?" God laughed at him and answered, "You foolish Raika, don't you realize how much trouble you're going to have filling one? — Robyn Davidson

Some of us just don't want to be famous ... anonymity cannot be bought for any price, once you have lost it ... — Robyn Davidson

You apply the skills you use to produce your own book to make an anthology. Shaping. Rhythm. — Robyn Davidson

And I recognized then the process by which I had always attempted difficult things. I had simply not allowed myself to think of the consequences, but had closed my eyes, jumped in, and before I knew where I was, it was impossible to renege. I was basically a dreadful coward, I knew that about myself. The only way I could overcome this was to trick myself with that other self, who lived in dream and fantasy and who was annoyingly lackadaisical and unpractical. All passion, no sense, no order, no instinct for self-preservation. That's what I had done, and now that cowardly self had discovered an unburnt bridge by which to return to the past. As Renata Adler writes in Speedboat: I think when you are truly stuck, when you have stood still in the same spot for too long, you throw a grenade in exactly the spot you were standing in, and jump, and pray. It is the momentum of last resort. — Robyn Davidson

Thank God for being a writer, because you do sort of find out what you think by the process of writing. — Robyn Davidson

Australia's arid western region, from the town of Alice Springs to the Indian Ocean coast, is a beautiful, haunting, but largely empty land. Dominated by the harsh, almost uninhabited Great Sandy and Gibson deserts, the region is known only to Australian Aborigines, a handful of white settlers, and the few travelers who motor across it. — Robyn Davidson

Because if you are fragmented and uncertain it is terrifying to find the boundaries of yourself melt. Survival in a desert, then, requires that you lose this fragmentation, and fast. It is not a mystical experience, or rather, it is dangerous to attach these sorts of words to it. — Robyn Davidson

The two important things that I did learn were that you are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of any endeavour is taking the first step, making the first decision. — Robyn Davidson

In every religion I can think of, there exists some variation on the theme of abandoning the settled life and walking one's way to godliness. The Hindu sadhu, the pilgrims of Compostela walking past their sins, the circumambulators of the Buddhist kora, the haj. — Robyn Davidson

I do not mean to say that we should, or could, return to traditional nomadic economies. I do mean to say that there are systems of knowledge and grand poetical schemata derived from the mobile life that it would be foolish to disregard or underrate. And mad to destroy. — Robyn Davidson

I had rediscovered people in my past and come to terms with my feelings towards them. I had learnt what love was. That love wanted the best possible for those you cared for even if that excluded yourself. That before, I had wanted to possess people without loving them, and now I could love them and wish them the best without needing them. — Robyn Davidson

When I die, this is the only gold that will go with me. What does one take after death? Just one's good deeds and the love of others. — Robyn Davidson

I've chosen difficult men. But then I'm sure they'd say they'd chosen a difficult woman. — Robyn Davidson

Never, never have a famous partner. It's too complicated. — Robyn Davidson

I love the desert and its incomparable sense of space. — Robyn Davidson

I believe the subconscious always knows what is best. It is our conditioned, vastly overrated rational mind which screws everything up. So — Robyn Davidson

I had to learn how to be cheerful in the face of adversity — Robyn Davidson

I had learnt to use my fears as stepping stones rather than stumbling blocks, — Robyn Davidson