"I have spent weeks in the desert, forgetting to look at the moon, he says, as a married man may spend days never looking into the face of his wife. These are not sins of omission but signs of pre-occuopation."
— Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient)

"She wanted to eat my heart and be lost in the desert with what she'd done, she wanted to fall on her knees and give birth from it, she wanted to hurt me as only a child can be hurt by its mother."
— Denis Johnson (Jesus' Son)

"Water, water, water....There is no shortage of water in the desert but exactly the right amount , a perfect ratio of water to rock, water to sand, insuring that wide free open, generous spacing among plants and animals, homes and towns and cities, which makes the arid West so different from any other part of the nation. There is no lack of water here unless you try to establish a city where no city should be."
— Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire a Season In the Wildern)

"It was a lone tree burning on the desert. A heraldic tree that the passing storm had left afire. The solitary pilgrim drawn up before it had traveled far to be here and he knelt in the hot sand and held his numbed hands out while all about in that circle attended companies of lesser auxiliaries routed forth into the inordinate day, small owls that crouched silently and stood from foot to foot and tarantulas and solpugas and vinegarroons and the vicious mygale spiders and beaded lizards with mouths black as a chowdog's, deadly to man, and the little desert basilisks that jet blood from their eyes and the small sandvipers like seemly gods, silent and the same, in Jeda, in Babylon. A constellation of ignited eyes that edged the ring of light all bound in a precarious truce before this torch whose brightness had set back the stars in their sockets."
— Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West)

"Беше времето на небесната война."
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"Нейният баща и беше разправял за ръцете. И за кучешките лапи. Винаги, когато оставаше насаме с някое куче, той се навеждаше и помирисваше кожата на стъпалата му. "Тази миризма - обичаше да казва, сякаш описваше аромата на глътка бренди - е най-великата на света! Букет! Полъх от грандиозни пътешествия." Тя се преструваше на погнусена, но кучешката лапа си оставаше едно чудо - никога не лъхаше на мръсотия. "Като катедрала! - бе възкликнал баща й. - Може би лъх от тази или онази градина, от зелена поляна или от цикламена леха - досущ смес-концентрат от всички обходени през дена пътеки."
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"Спалните бяха притихнали като тъмни джобове на златен костюм."
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"На зазоряване, когато се промъкваше вкъщи, тя го намираше заспал в креслото на баща й, изтощен от професионални и лични грабежи. Тя мислешеза Караваджо. Има такива хора, просто трябва да се вкопчиш в тях, да се впиеш в плътта им, за да не полудееш в тяхната компания."
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"В Канада пианото не може без вода. Отваря се капакът и се оставя чша вода. След месец чашата е празна."
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"В пустинята водата е обичана като жена - изтичащ между пръстите лазур, чийто капки галят гърлото като звуци от любимо име. Поглъщаш нечие отсъствие. На жена. В Кайро. Бели, протяжни извивки на надигащо се от леглото тяло - тя се надвесва през прозореца и дъждът попива в голата й плът."
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"Тя го мразеше, когато говореше така. Тогава погледът й ставаше любезен, а вътрешно изпитваше желание да го зашлеви. Винаги бе искала да го зашлеви и осъзнаваше сексуалността на този акт."
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"Красивите песни на вярата пронизват въздуха като стрели, минаретата разговарят, сякаш разнасят слуха за любовниците, които вървят в студения утринен въздух, наситен с миризмата на дървени въглища и хашиш. Грешници в свещен град."
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"От този миг нататък, бе му пошушнала тя преди, или ще намерим душите си, или ще ги изгубим."
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"Как се случи това? Да се влюбя и да се разчленя.
Бях в ръцете й. Бях дръпнал ръкава на ризата до рамото, за да ивдя белега от ваксина. Обичам го, казах. Този блед ореол на нейната ръка. Виждам как спринцовката чертае драскотина. Пробив - и срумът прониква. Това се е случилоотдавна, когато е била на девет години, в салона за физкултура.""
— Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient)

"They took it for granted that if they went he would go also, but really they scarcely cared. Thus children are ever so ready, when novelty knocks, to desert their dearest ones."
— J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)

"WIDE, the margin between carte blanche and the white page. Nevertheless it is not in the margin that you can find me, but in the yet whiter one that separates the word-strewn sheet from the transparent, the written page from the one to be written in the infinite space where the eye turns back to the eye, and the hand to the pen, where all we write is erased, even as you write it. For the book imperceptibly takes shape within the book we will never finish.

There is my desert."
— Edmond Jabès

"They laid up in the shade of a rock shelf until past noon, scratching out a place in the gray lava dust to sleep, and they set forth in the afternoon down the valley following the war trail and they were very small and they moved very slowly in the immensity of that landscape.

Come evening they hove toward the rimrock again and Sproule pointed out a dark stain on the face of the barren cliff. It looked like the black from old fires. The kid shielded his eyes. The scalloped canyon walls rippled in the heat like drapery folds."
— Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West)

"Each thing in its way, when true to its own character, is equally beautiful. (p 41)"
— Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire)

"The desert and the ocean are realms of desolation on the surface.

The desert is a place of bones, where the innards are turned out, to desiccate into dust.

The ocean is a place of skin, rich outer membranes hiding thick juicy insides, laden with the soup of being.

Inside out and outside in. These are worlds of things that implode or explode, and the only catalyst that determines the direction of eco-movement is the balance of water.

Both worlds are deceptive, dangerous. Both, seething with hidden life.

The only veil that stands between perception of what is underneath the desolate surface is your courage.

Dare to breach the surface and sink."
— Vera Nazarian

"I asked him if it were a mirage, and he said yes. I said it was a dream, and he agreed, But said it was the desert's dream not his. And he told me that in a year or so, when he had aged enough for any man, then he would walk into the wind, until he saw the tents. This time, he said, he would go on with them."
— Neil Gaiman (Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions)

"They laid up in the shade of a rock shelf until past noon, scratching out a place in the gray lava dust to sleep, and they set forth in the afternoon down the valley following the war trail and they were very small and they moved very slowly in the immensity of that landscape.

Come evening they hove toward the rimrock again and Sproule pointed out a dark stain on the face of the barren cliff. It looked like the black from old fires. The kid shielded his eyes. The scalloped canyon walls rippled in the heat like drapery folds."
— Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West)