Island Travel Quotes & Sayings

I thought of a high school report I did on the Belgian artist Rene Magritte and a quote I once read from him, something about his favorite walk being the one he took around his own bedroom. He said that he never understood the need for people to travel because all the poetry and perspective you're ever going to get you already posses. Anais Nin had the same idea. We see the world as we are. So if it's the same brain we bring with us every time we open our eyes, what's the difference if we're looking at an island cove or a pocket watch? — Sloane Crosley

Philistia had been settled generations earlier when the Mediterranean Sea Peoples had left their habitations in search of new territory and landed on the shores of Canaan. They were not a singular people, but consisted of a variety of Aegean clans; Cherethites, Pelethites, and even Caphtorim, from the island of Caphtor, also known as Crete. These Sea Peoples had quickly established their presence on the coast and immediately launched an invasion of Egypt. They were repelled and so accepted a form of vassalage under the Pharaoh's authority. They became known collectively as Philistines and maintained a profitable control of the access to shipping routes to the rest of the world, including Egypt, for travel and trade. The land route from Canaan to Egypt eventually was called the Way of the Philistines. — Brian Godawa

Have we even so much as discovered and settled the shores? Let a man travel on foot along the coastand tell me if it looks like a discovered and settled country, and not rather, for the most part, like a desolate island, and No-Man's Land. — Henry David Thoreau

Perhaps the palms had been whispering warnings in the sultry breeze. — T.L. Parker

A man may daydream of how he would spend a million dollars, but playing the same game with a billion dollars sours the fantasy. There are too many possibilities. The house he once wished for with all his heart is suddenly too small. The travel, too cheap. He wanted to visit an island. Now he contemplates buying one. — Holly Black

The covers are rugged hand-laid paper of rice chaff, bamboo tailings, free-range hemp, and crystalline glacial meltwater made by wizened artisans operating out of a mist-shrouded temple hewn from living volcanic rock on some island known only to aerobically gifted, Spandex-sheathed Left Coast travel bores. An — Neal Stephenson

Soon you catch your first glimpse of a vineyard basking in the sun, its broad leaves silently turning sunlight into sugar, ripening vitis vinifera, the European grapes that make the world's finest wines. For a moment you might imagine you've been mysteriously wafted to the French countryside, but no, this is the East End of Long Island, the most exciting new wine region in North America. You've reached your destination, but your journey of discovery has barely begun — Jane Taylor Starwood

Immigration and travel certainly don't mean the same thing everywhere. Here in Cuba, the big wall isn't just the fact that it's an island, but the fact that we need an exit permit in order to leave, and the letters of invitation in order to visit another country. — Fernando Perez

But then you heard Sophie was coming to Hecate, and you decided to stay," Lara finished, and her lips twisted in the triumphant smile I'd seen on Mrs. Casnoff's face dozens of times. I stood there, frozen in place, as she turned back to me and said, "Mr. Callahan gave up a chance to travel the world with the Council so that he could be little more than a janitor on Graymalkin Island. For you. — Rachel Hawkins

Traveling further ingrained my desire to connect to a place other than an island that is slightly older, in a New World way, than the United States, especially after I found characteristics of my face in the faces of the people in my global community. — Raquel Cepeda

You have this impression from England that New Yorkers can be quite aggressive, but certainly the people that I've bumped into and the friends I've made here don't seem that way. Just walking down the street and asking for directions, people seem to be very helpful and happy to help. — Archie Panjabi

Statuettes of drunken sailors, velvet pictures of island maidens, plastic seashell lamps made in Taiwan. What contempt the people who think up souvenirs have for other people. — Diane Johnson

When it was just you and your fight to live, the only thing that mattered was time. Time was the only thing reminding you to propel forward and find your next meal, the next roof over your head, or those few hours of crucial sleep, because your days were numbered and they wouldn't stop for anyone, no matter how rich, privileged, or smart you were.
If there was one thing I'd learned in my short span of twenty-three years, it was that time didn't discriminate. — Rachael Wade

While my library contains the works of travel writers, I have mostly searched for those who speak about their own place in the world. But the world is changing and many people have no place to call home. Some of the most important kinds of travel writing now are stories of flight, written by people who belong to the millions of asylum seekers in the world. These are stories that are almost too hard to tell, but which, once read, will never be forgotten. Some of these stories had to be smuggled out of detention centres, or were caught covertly on smuggled mobiles in snatches of calls on weak connections from remote and distant prisons. Why is this writing important? Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish journalist and human rights campaigner who has been detained on Manus Island for over three years with no hope for release yet in sight, puts it plainly in a message to the world in the anthology Behind the Wire. It is, he wrote, 'because we need to change our imagination'. — Alexis Wright

She was battered incessantly, regularly, all the time. I'm not saying 24 hours a day, but the incidents of battering were extraordinarily high. — Susan Forward

After a day on Mykines, I changed my mind about life not going on. A sort of life was going on, beating with a reasonalbe version of a pulse, but that life consisted for the most part of travelers like myself. There were maybe a dozen of us
one third of the island's population. Our tribe could only increase as the Mykines tribe dwindled away, a few falling down steps, most simply emigrating, until there would be, sad to say, only our peripatetic selves. We were the future of all places condemned by remoteness to a lingering, photogenic death. — Lawrence Millman

The longing provoked by the brochure was an example , at once touching and pathetic, of how projects (and even whole lives) might be influenced by the simplest and most unexamined images of happiness; of how a lengthy and ruinously expensive journey might be set in motion by nothing more than the sigh of a photograph of a palm tree gently inclining in a tropical breeze. I resolved to travel to the island of Barbados. — Alain De Botton

Dammit, why isn't there a book with the answers in it? — Cherise Sinclair

Daring greatly means the courage to be vulnerable. It means to show up and be seen. To ask for what you need. To talk about how you're feeling. To have the hard conversations. — Brene Brown

I travel, I read, I write, I have other lives. But when I have a camera, I know that's my country, my island. — Leos Carax

Landlords took the side streets, typically not in their Saab or Audi but in their "rent collector," some oil-leaking, rusted-out van or truck that hauled around extension cords, ladders, maybe a loaded pistol, plumbing snakes, toolboxes, a can of Mace, nail guns, and other necessities. — Matthew Desmond

No, Captain Lombard, the matter rests there. It is understood by my client that your reputation is that of a good man in a tight place. I am empowered to hand you one hundred guineas in return for which you will travel to Sticklehaven, Devon. The nearest station is Oakbridge, you will be met there and motored to Sticklehaven where a motor launch will convey you to Soldier Island. There you will hold yourself at the disposal of my client. Lombard — Agatha Christie

Before embarking on a voyage, first speak with the ancient sailors, listen to and understand the winds, then patiently make a boat and sail. Yet, even then, be open to other dreams, changes, circumstances. Throughout our lives, we limit ourselves to fixed goals, only to get on the local ferry and just travel the distance between two known points. Yet, we create an illusion of freedom and choice, accompanied by a sense of independence. Thus, we carefully study weather reports, ride on the port side on odd numbered days, starboard on holidays, have tea at fixed times, never speak with those who wear glasses, always smile at those who wear green and of course allow ourselves just the slight possibility of a dream about jumping ship and going off to our island one day.
C'est la vie? Our predictably totalitarian lives are an insult to the human spirit. — Gunduz Vassaf

It was the inverse of an island in the sea. — Elisabeth Eaves

The night felt like it had gone by so fast, yet every second of it was bright and burned into my mind, and I felt sure I would never forget any of it, almost like I'd left some part of me back there on that island, a piece carved out that wouldn't travel into whatever came next. It would just stay behind, living that night over and over. — Kevin Emerson

Gradually the magic of the island [Corfu] settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen. — Gerald Durrell

(Mariners) have written one of its most brilliant chapters. They have delivered the goods when and where needed in every theater of operations and across every ocean in the biggest, the most difficult and dangerous job ever undertaken. As time goes on, there will be greater public understanding of our merchant's fleet record during this war. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Do not settle for people who do not appreciate you, who do not know how lucky they are. Remember it is a privilege to be loved by you or even just to be touched by you. And the warmth of another body does not define your worth. — Sade Andria Zabala

We all look back at some time or other and wonder why we didn't listen to our instincts. Why did we hestiate? Why did we lose our dreams? — Diane Griffith