From Beryl Markham’s memoir, West With The Night:

“You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself.   You learn to watch other people, but you never watch yourself because you strive against loneliness.  If you read a book, or shuffle a deck of cards, or care for a dog, you are avoiding yourself.  The abhorrence of loneliness is as natural as wanting to live at all”

“I knew too little of Africa to leave it, and what I knew I loved too much.  Peru was a name–a smudge of purple on a schoolbook map.  I could put my finger on Peru, but my feet were on the earth of Africa….There were men who said they had explored Africa; they had written books about it.  But I knew the truth.  I knew that, for myself, the country had not yet been found; it was unknown.  It had just barely been dreamed.”