“Number of camels it would take for a man to buy me: every camel in the world.”

“The second thing that I struck me was that people are not, contrary to popular belief, rude. Not in the slightest. In fact, most of them are exceptionally polite. What they are, however – and what is, I think, mistaken by many as rudeness – is busy. So busy you almost feel sorry for them. So busy that you wish Brita would start putting Valium in their filters.”

“I shrug and smile amiably the way you do when you're in a foreign country and have no idea what anyone is saying, so you end up grinning and nodding your way into a three-way with a henna vendor and a camel.”

“When I came here, it stunned me at first to realize how much what I had thought of as civilization was really just advertising and marketing, incessant urgings to buy, Buy, BUY. from Dead Cat Bounce”

“Men," she said rueful, "are the most absurd creatures on this green earth." "But there are camels," Gabriel pointed out. "Believe me," she answered. "I've taken camels into consideration.”

“Do not free a camel of the burden of his hump; you may be freeing him from being a camel.”

“Tomorrow, sell our camel and buy a horse. Camels are traitorous: they walk thousands of paces and never seem to tire. Then suddenly, they kneel and die. But horses tire bit by bit. You always know how much you know you can ask of them, and when it is that they are about to die.”