Do yourself a favor. Before it’s too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.
Jhumpa Lahiri, The Namesake
Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five
I wanted adventures. I wanted to go up the Nung river to the heart of darkness in Cambodia. I wanted to ride out into a desert on camelback, sand and dunes in every direction, eat whole roasted lamb with my fingers. I wanted to kick snow off my boots in a Mafiya nightclub in Russia. I wanted to play with automatic weapons in Phnom Penh, recapture the past in a small oyster village in France, step into a seedy neon-lit pulqueria in rural Mexico. I wanted to run roadblocks in the middle of the night, blowing past angry militia with a handful of hurled Marlboro packs, experience fear, excitement, wonder. I wanted kicks – the kind of melodramatic thrills and chills I’d yearned for since childhood, the kind of adventure I’d found as a little boy in the pages of my Tintin comic books. I wanted to see the world – and I wanted the world to be just like the movies.
Anthony Bourdain, A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines
You see I usually find myself among strangers because I drift here and there trying to forget the sad things that happened to me.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.
Robert Louis Stevenson
I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.
Mary Anne Radmacher Hershey
If you’re twenty-two, physically fit, hungry to learn and be better, I urge you to travel— as far and as widely as possible. Sleep on floors if you have to. Find out how other people live and eat and cook. Learn from them— wherever you go.
Anthony Bourdain (via visceralconnection)
(via jess-agi)
Source: peter-sawyer
Do we really want to travel in hermetically sealed popemobiles through the rural provinces of France, Mexico and the Far East, eating only in Hard Rock Cafes and McDonalds? Or do we want to eat without fear, tearing into the local stew, the humble taqueria’s mystery meat, the sincerely offered gift of a lightly grilled fish head? I know what I want. I want it all. I want to try everything once.
Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Make voyages! Attempt them… there’s nothing else.
Tennessee Williams
If you take a book with you on a journey,…an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It will all come into your mind with the very first words: the sights you saw in that place, what it smelled like, the ice cream you ate while you were reading it…yes, books are like flypaper—memories cling to the printed page better than anything else.
Cornelia Funke, Inkheart (via s0nata)
Travel changes you. As you move through this life and this world you change things slightly, you leave marks behind, however small. And in return, life - and travel - leaves marks on you. Most of the time, those marks - on your body or on your heart - are beautiful. Often, though, they hurt.
Anthony Bourdain, The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Useable Trim, Scraps, and Bones
To my mind, the greatest reward and luxury of travel is to be able to experience everyday things as if for the first time, to be in a position in which almost nothing is so familiar it is taken for granted.
Bill Bryson
The journey is part of the experience - an expression of the seriousness of one’s intent. One doesn’t take the A train to Mecca.
Anthony Bourdain, A Cook’s Tour: Global Adventures in Extreme Cuisines
She likes it when the staplers in the supply room are in a neat line, speaks endlessly about ‘transparency’ and ‘capacity building,’ says that ‘I’m living a life I’m proud of,’ and every so often, when Yemen gets to her, as it inevitably gets to everyone, including Yemenis, she announces, ‘I’m going to be quiet for a few minutes’ and shuts her door.
David Finkel, Exporting Democracy [Washington Post]
Perhaps I am the turtle, able to live simply anywhere, even underwater for short periods, with my home on my back.
Kurt Vonnegut, Slapstick
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lines, lyrics and literary fragments that call for a pause