It was the farthest she had ever been from home, not only in miles but in feeling. The vastness of the desert frightened her. Everything looked too far away, even the cloudless sky. There was nowhere you could hide in such emptiness. – James Carlos Blake, The Rules of Wolfe: A Border Noir, 2013

Welcome to Arizona, where summer spends the winter — and hell spends the summer. – Popular saying, modified from a booster slogan in the 1930s

I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams. РAntoine de Saint-Exup̩ry