#travel

"My grandfather says that's what books are for,"Ashoke said, using the opportunity to open the volume in his hands. "To travel without moving an inch."

"This was how it was with travel: one city gives you gifts, another robs you. One gives you the heart’s affections, the other destroys your soul. Cities and countries are as alive, as feeling, as fickle and uncertain as people. Their degrees of love and devotion are as varying as with any human relation. Just as one is good, another is bad."

"Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving."

"Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own."

"While we are looking for the antidote or the medicine to cure us, that is, the 'new', which can only be found by plunging deep into the Unknown, we have to go on exploring sex, books, and travel, although we know that they lead us to the abyss, which, as it happens, is the only place where the antidote can be found."

"Augustus,"I said. "Really. You don't have to do this.""Sure I do,"he said. "I found my Wish.""God, you're the best,"I told him."I bet you say that to all the boys who finance your international travel,"he answered."

"Writing is an affair of yearning for great voyages and hauling on frayed ropes."

"If life is a journey then let my soul travel and share your pain."

"It can hardly be a coincidence that no language on earth has ever produced the expression, 'As pretty as an airport."

"A good traveler leaves no tracks. Good speech lacks fault-finding."

"So I find words I never thought to speakIn streets I never thought I should revisitWhen I left my body on a distant shore."

"Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand."

"Every sacred travel transforms the soul."

"There are several ways to react to being lost. One is to panic: this was usually Valentina's first impulse. Another is to abandon yourself to lostness, to allow the fact that you've misplaced yourself to change the way you experience the world."

"When I travel, I draw and paint sketches which is great fun. And as long as you are fully aware that it has nothing to do with actual art, I think that's all right."

"In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own."

"I am not a great cook, I am not a great artist, but I love art, and I love food, so I am the perfect traveller."

"We did all the tourist crap, but I just wanted to sit in a cafe and watch people"

"I want a moon canoe, because have you ever tried paddling through dirt? Love is a journey, and I try to travel as efficiently as I can."

"...it was if another planet were calling. The call, embodied, issued in liquid syllables from the mouth of the Arab sailor who, on the prow of the Vestra each sun-up, looked toward the East and sang the Persian song:Hearken unto dawn, oh, my soul...Let good come unto the world."