Quotes & Sayings About Maps

For me, it started as a child with one of those little wooden jigsaw maps of the U.S., where's there's crocodiles on Florida and apples on Washington state. That was my very first map. — Ken Jennings

If a prisoner hadn't lived outside, he would not
detest the dungeon. Desiring knows there's satisfaction beyond this. Straying maps
the path. A secret freedom opens through a crevice you can barely see. Your love
of many things proves they're one. Every separate stiff trunk and stem in the garden
connects with nimble root hairs underground. The awareness a wine drinker wants cannot
be tasted in wine, but that failure brings his deep thirst closer. So the heart keeps ignoring
the waterfall and the key, but there is one guiding through all the desiring restlessness. — Rumi

The point of asking questions is to find true answers; the point of measuring is to measure accurately; the point of making maps is to find your way to your destination ... In short, the goal of truth goes without saying, in every human culture. — Daniel Dennett

When someone doesn't show up, the people who wait sometimes tell stories about what might have happened and come to half believe the desertion, the abduction, the accident. Worry is a way to pretend that you have knowledge or control over what you don't
and it surprises me, even in myself, how much we prefer ugly scenarios to the pure unknown. Perhaps fantasy is what you fill up maps with rather than saying that they too contain the unknown. — Rebecca Solnit

Fifty percent of the United States of America is underneath the ocean. And we have better maps of Mars than those areas. — Robert Ballard

I will have to pay more attention to Russian weather forecasts in future, to check that Kiev, Warsaw, Riga and Vilnius are not included in their maps. — Andrey Kurkov

What is it about maps? I could look at them all day, earnestly studying the names of towns and villages I have never heard of and will never visit ... — Bill Bryson

I am told there are people who do not care for maps, and I find it hard to believe. — Robert Louis Stevenson

What the maps did not show was that Japanese farmers and workers had usually been there for decades, even generations, before the bases and other facilities were built. — Richard Reeves

Mapping and visualization is a huge area of work and is of interest to many people. We're working on reinventing a new kind of 3D cartography to make it easier to tell stories with 3D maps. — Jack Dangermond

I would stare at maps of Delaware for hours. — Ken Jennings

The group I am moving towards is at Caleb Garth's breakfast-table in the large parlor where the maps and desk were: father, mother, and five of the children. Mary was just now at home waiting for a situation, while Christy, the boy next to her, was getting cheap learning and cheap fare in Scotland, having to his father's disappointment taken to books instead of that sacred calling "business. — George Eliot

When the story gets sad and terrible, when there are too many mistakes to count, hang on for the beautiful parts. Wait for them. Have some faith they'll arrive. This is also precisely the point: the hanging on. The waiting, the faith. — Deb Caletti

Skating was put on the map, supposedly from me Everybody made a life and a livelihood, um, except me. — Tonya Harding

Crimson flames tied through my ears rolling high and mighty traps, pounced with fire on flaming roads using ideas as my maps. — Bob Dylan

Oh, who would choose to be a traveler?
That anxious railway-guide unravelerWho spends his nights in berths and bunks,His days in chaperoning trunks;Who stands in line at gates and wicketsTo spend his means on costly ticketsTo Irkutsk, Liverpool and YapAnd other dots upon the map. — Arthur Guiterman

That old man over there
Is selling trinkets made of stones
That old woman the entire world
In a map without any hole! — Avijeet Das

I started to write a series of fantasy novels when I was eleven. I have never taken anything artistic as seriously; since then, writing has felt like an attempt to get back there, to my bedroom, my maps, those races and languages and runes. — Ken Baumann

Then we talked a lot about our parents and how we didn't want to become them, but we had no other role models
or "maps," Alex kept saying. "My father is a terrible map, mostly because he doesn't ever lead me anywhere." And I thought about my parents being maps that led to places I didn't want to go
and it made a shocking amount of sense, using the word maps to describe parents. If almost made you feel like you could fold Mom and Dad up and lock them away in the glove compartment of your car and just joyride for the rest of your life maybe. — Matthew Quick

Aquinas said if you have knowledge you don't need faith, and I think he was on to something, but for now all I can do is find the Church of Inadvertent Joy, and if and when I do, I'll stumble in and drop fifty cents in the brass-plated poor box, ignite a beeswax candle and confess myself at the crossroads. Having professed my faithlessness, I will be blessed, and the psoriasis or eczema that's thickened my feet and shattered the skin of my hands will instantly melt, for confession is good for the sole and fine for the fingers. Aquinas also said evil is a privation, ergo hell is a place that's a void. The heavenly need for placement being motivation for all maps, including a face. — Vanessa Place

Pirates did not store all their treasures in treasure chests, then bury them and draw maps to them. That's a movie invention. In reality, pirates spent their money as fast as they could steal it because they knew they were living on borrowed time. They didn't want to wait around to enjoy the money. — Robert Kurson

I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some, uh ... people out there in our nation don't have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as in South Africa and, uh, the Iraq, everywhere like such as, and, I believe that they should, our education over HERE in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, or, uh, should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future, for our children. — George W. Bush

Arrogance is a map of a road that leads to bridges that are out. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

There is only one map to the journey of life and it lives within your heart — Willie Nelson

I had four C-sections and my stomach looked like the map of the world. My breasts were hanging down to here from breastfeeding those babies, and my nipples were like platters. I wanted to fit into the gowns that I finally got to wear. — Patricia Heaton

Kaidan had been captivated by the store owner's deep Texan accent. He asked a ridiculous number of questions just to keep the man talking. He then tried to repeat the man's accent when we got in the car. "Where are y'all young'uns headed? We got us some maps over yonder by them there h-apples."
I laughed out loud as he butchered the man's beautiful drawl.
"He did not say 'over yonder'!"
"I've always wanted to say that. I love Americans. You've got a nice little accent, though not nearly as wicked as his."
"I do?"
He nodded.
Aside from the occasional y'all, I didn't think I sounded Southern, but I guess it's hard to say about your own self. — Wendy Higgins

Letter 1
To the princess of the elephants,
I disappeared exactly one year ago. On that day I received a letter. It called me back to the place where my life with the elephants began
Please forgive me, for the silence between us has been unbroken for one year.
I will never be more of myself than in these letters.
They are my maps of the bird path, and they are all that I know to be true. — Gregory Colbert

We learn best with focused attention. As we focus on what we're learning, the brain maps that information on what we already know making new neural connections — Daniel Goleman

Professors could silence me then; they had figures, diagrams, maps, books ... I was learning that books and diagrams can be evil things if they deaden the mind of man and make him blind or cynical before subjection of any kind. — Agnes Smedley

If you want to put yourself on the map, publish your own map. — Ashleigh Brilliant

She was hearing everything that went on in his heart, like a person who can trace a map with his fingertip and conjure up vivid, living scenery. — Haruki Murakami

Please stop waiting for a map. We reward those who draw maps, not those who follow them. — Seth Godin

I loved them in the way one loves at any age - if it's real at all - obsessively, painfully, with wild exaltation, with guilt, with conflict; I wrote poems to and about them; I put them into novels (disguised of course); I brooded upon why they were as they were, so often maddening, don't you know? I wrote them ridiculous letters. I lived with their faces. I knew their every gesture by heart. I stalked them like wild animals. I studied them as if they were maps of the world - and in a way, I suppose they were." She had spoken rapidly, on the defensive ... if he thought she didn't know what she was talking about! "Love opens the doors into everything, as far as I can see, including and perhaps most of all, the door into one's own secret, and often terrible and frightening, real self. — May Sarton

Am I making myself clear, Orrin? I don't regret how I've lived these past few years. I move where I will. I set no appointments. I guard no borders. What landbound king has the freedom of a ship's captain? The Sea of Brass provides. When I need haste, it gives me winds. When I need gold, it gives me galleons." Thieves prosper, thought Locke. The rich remember. He made his decision, and gripped the rail to avoid shaking.
"Only gods-damned fools die for lines drawn on maps," said Zamira. "But nobody can draw lines around my ship. If they try, all I need to do to slip away is set more sail. — Scott Lynch

The bus timetable sites are all run by an inbred cabal of malicious gnomes. Who don't speak English. And who don't count very well either. Or tell time. And they certainly can't read maps. — Robin McKinley

They record thoughts and overheard conversations, as well as maps of their personal paths, phone numbers for hotels, restaurant recommendations, airline flight numbers. Eventually, — Danny Gregory

I know people have swum the 3.5 mile stretch of the Solent from the Isle of Wight to the mainland for charity, and some just for the hell of it in the Cross Solent Swim, but this was at night, in the dark and without the help of a nearby boat to haul me in to safety. I didn't have the benefit of tidal maps, accompanied swimming mates in near perfect conditions or the likes. I only my strength of determination and the beckoning lights on the mainland to aim for. — Stephen Richards

Google maps are one thing but there's no substitute for pounding the beat and I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to break into the back of the houses on Belgrave Place. Once I even for followed by a suspicious householder - I'd been hanging around staring at the exterior of his flat for too long. — Sara Sheridan

We're all pilgrims on the same journey - but some pilgrims have better road maps. — Nelson DeMille

You can't use an old map to see a new land. — Gary Hamel

Sometimes there's no map when you go to new places, you have to make unexpected turns, but the beauty is these places are new. — Christopher Hawke

Will wolfed down his sandwich, drank half his water, and went to work examining the boxes. He discovered that all of them had dates scrawled on the side, so he cranked up to his highest speed, motored around the room rearranging them, and had them neatly arranged in chronological order in less than twenty minutes. Three equal rows, forty boxes in each, lined up in the center of the room. Some were sealed; most were open. Their weight varied greatly; some were packed solid and heavy with books and ledgers, while others contained nothing but rolled-up maps. — Mark Frost

There are map people whose joy is to lavish more attention on the sheets of colored paper than on the colored land rolling by. I have listened to accounts by such travelers in which every road number was remembered, every mileage recalled, and every little countryside discovered. Another kind of traveler requires to know in terms of maps exactly where he is pin-pointed at every moment, as though there were some kind of safety in black and red lines, in dotted indications and squirming blue of lakes and the shadings that indicate mountains. It is not so with me. I was born lost and take no pleasure in being found, nor much identification from shapes which symbolize continents and states. — John Steinbeck

Even after three hundred maps have been handed out, Ama and I still melt the moment people switch from being suspicious that we want to sell them something
"Hey? What do you want? Money? Directions?
to realising that we just want to know their stories, their memories, what they love
"Oh, in that case, thanks, sweeties! — Becky Cooper

The most promising words ever written on the maps of human knowledge are terra incognita, unknown territory. — Daniel J. Boorstin

It would be helpful to be able to see the layout and for the maps to label what exits to use to get to nearby sites/buildings so you aren't wandering the station trying to read the signs in the crowds. — Robert James Thomson

There are no maps to guide our most important searches; we must rely on hope, chance, intuition, and a willingness to be surprised. — Gordon Livingston

The Internet has obviously wiped music off the human map - killed the record shop, and killed the patience of labels who consider debut sales of 300,000 to not be good enough. — Steven Morrissey

Saw Gamache shaking his head he reconsidered. Not the maps? — Louise Penny

Throughout history, fairly arbitrary lines drawn on maps have determined who prospers and who needs, who eats and who starves, who attacks and who is attacked, who lives long and who dies young. Oh, we have been slaves to those lines for so long ... — Gavin De Becker

he knew from studying maps in preparation: the broad avenues leading to the Brandenburg Gate. He had played Bach's Brandenburg Concertos records many times, intricate magic alive in the air. The gate that led to the town of Brandenburg an der Havel. — Gregory Benford

I'm all for setting goals and making plans for the lives we want to become a reality. I love vision statements and life maps, but I have also discovered the power of a woman who does just one thing. — Nicki Koziarz

I usually go in ahead of time, like at a rehearsal, or a meeting, and tell them, "It may appear that I'm going to go haywire, but I'm not." I always map out what I'm going to do. Still, a lot of it is improvised. — Paul Reubens

Some people spend their life studying maps but never start the journey; other people blast off the starting line full speed ahead without first charting a course. Most of us could benefit from a better balance between planning and doing. — Gregory D. Kincaid

Fire - A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons - as well as Tuf Voyaging, Fevre Dream, The Armageddon Rag, Dying of the Light, Windhaven (with Lisa Tuttle), and Dreamsongs Volumes I and II. He is also the creator of The Lands of Ice and Fire, a collection of maps from A Song of Ice and Fire featuring original artwork from illustrator and cartographer Jonathan Roberts, and The World of Ice & Fire (with — George R R Martin

Everything I have ever bought is in my car. People say it's a skip and disgusting, and refuse to get in there. That's one advantage. Another is that last week, I needed a headache pill and it was simply a case of rummaging under the seat until I found one. Because it's so full of junk, I always have everything I could conceivably need. A Biro, a refreshing drink, lots of loose change, all sorts of maps, an iron lung, and so on. I kid you not. There's even a wetsuit in there. — Jeremy Clarkson

The Lord of the Rings' is fundamentally an infantile work. Tolkien is not interested in the way grownup, adult human beings interact with each other. He's interested in maps and plans and languages and codes. — Philip Pullman

We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night - every night, every night - the moment I feigned sleep. — Vladimir Nabokov

Ones vision is not a road map but a compass. — Peter Block

The truth is, I don't sketch much at all. I have a very visual/spatial brain that retains a lot of information about maps, directions, positioning, and details, so I usually prefer working out those issues on the page itself. — Nate Powell

Doctors sometimes draw maps of other parts of you, and your own map can become intensely interesting, but catch them trying to draw a map of a child's mind, which is not only confused, but keeps going round all the time. — J.M. Barrie

Earlier maps had underestimated the distances to other continents and exaggerated the outlines of individual nations. Now global dimensions could be set, with authority, by the celestial spheres. Indeed, King Louis XIV of France, confronted with a revised map of his domain based on accurate longitude measurements, reportedly complained that he was losing more territory to his astronomers than to his enemies. — Dava Sobel

Satellite images, maps and blueprints of the whole world, of every city. We could look it up and know what's there in someone else's words. Or we could get wicked drunk and just go. — Joey Comeau

World-building is my favorite pastime, so with me, I'm always about reining myself in. I don't want to lose too much of the mystery by hammering every detail to death. I did fiddle with lots of maps for 'Glass Sword,' as the second installment sees Mare, Cal and company traveling throughout their country, and that's always fun for me. — Victoria Aveyard

So you want me to track down a supernaturally fast sniper who can disappear into thin air, retrieve your maps, and do it so nobody finds out what I'm doing or why?'
'Exactly.'
I sighed. 'I'll get the paperwork. — Ilona Andrews

I've been touring a lot, and I don't always know how to get around. Google Maps on the iPhone is pretty helpful with that. — Joe Trohman

I sit at my desk
each night with no place to go,
opening the wrinkled maps of Milwaukee and Buffalo,
the whole U.S.,
its cemeteries, its arbitrary time zones,
through routes like small veins, capitals like small stones. — Anne Sexton

I suppose "cartographer" is as good a description as any, but the Argosi do not draw maps of places, but rather of people... cultures.' She tapped the deck in my hand. 'You understand the meaning of the suits? ... look more closely at the individual cards and you'll see that the particular design on each card reflects part of the fundamental power structure of that society.'
pg 79 — Sebastien De Castell

I'm a practicing Zen Buddhist and I'm influenced by my readings in that tradition, such as the notion that everyone is born a perfect being and we spend most of our lives with a clouded vision trying to realize our perfection, he says. At critical moments in the book, T.S. registers his inkling of this realization. When he makes his maps, it feels like taking down dictation from the universe. — Reif Larsen

Wars are Spinach. Life in general is the tough part. In war all you have to do is not worry and know how to read a map and co-ordinates. — Ernest Hemingway,

I live with past called "DeYtH" ( a guy who is famous with cs 1.6 maps, mods, photoshop and e.t.c. and with my now "Mark Tven", you probably said "Oh,Oh I know this name this guy was a writer..." it's not taken the guy was called Mark Twain, I'm Tven, famous with awesome maps and interesting updates of cs 1.6 maps. To don't forget, I'm famous with my nick of past with writting. — Deyth Banger

Buddha left a road map, Jesus left a road map, Krishna left a road map, Rand McNally left a road map. But you still have to travel the road yourself — Stephen Levine

Journey over all the universe in a map, without the expense and fatigue of traveling, without suffering the inconveniences of heat, cold, hunger, and thirst. — Miguel De Cervantes

Had I been too selfish? I had never known my mother, but I knew my life as it had been without her: the ship, the sea, the myths, the maps . . . and, yes, Kashmir. The pain I felt at the thought of losing him - the same pain that kept me at arm's length - gave me a hint of my father's own struggle. — Heidi Heilig

I have a map of the united states ... it's original size ... it says one mile equals one mile. — Steven Wright

Visual journals are created in a secret language of symbols. Intentional or not, they are private maps only their makers can follow. — Jennifer New

The present map of Palestine was drawn by the British mandate. The Jewish people have another map which our youth and adults should strive to fulfill: from the Nile to the Euphrates. — David Ben-Gurion

The eight-acre underground was so sprawling that for months after the park first opened, guides had to be stationed in the tunnels to redirect lost employees. Soon after, the tunnel walls were color-coded by land and maps were posted at each intersection to help newcomers find their way. — David Koenig

A story is a map of the world. A gloriously colored and wonderful map, the sort one often sees framed and hanging on the wall in a study full of plush chairs and stained-glass lamps: painstakingly lettered, researched down to the last pebble and participle, drawn with dash and flair, with cloud-goddesses in the corners and giant squid squirming up out of the sea ... [T]here are more maps in the world than anyone can count. Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center. — Catherynne M Valente

Human nature is to need a map. If you're brave enough to draw one, people will follow. — Seth Godin

The barrier to our future is often the very plans that we've created to get there. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

What if Hiram Bingham had the technology to find hundreds of other archaeological sites at the same time and create entire 3-D maps of the ancient landscape accurate to within a few inches? — Sarah Parcak

A drawing should be a verdict on the model. Don't confuse a drawing with a map. — Robert Henri

Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change. — Muhammad Ali

In the detective story, as in its mirror image, the Quest for the Grail, maps (the ritual of space) and timetables (the ritual of time) are desirable. Nature should reflect its human inhabitants, i.e., it should be the Great Good Place; for the more Eden-like it is, the greater the contradiction of murder. The country is preferable to the town, a well-to-do neighborhood (but not too well-to-do-or there will be a suspicion of ill-gotten gains) better than a slum. The corpse must shock not only because it is a corpse but also because, even for a corpse, it is shockingly out of place, as when a dog makes a mess on a drawing room carpet."

(The guilty vicarage: Notes on the detective story, by an addict, Harper's Magazine, May 1948) — W. H. Auden

I love wandering. It's liberating to throw away the map and explore uncharted galleries. You'll nearly always stumble into something immensely interesting that way. — Steve Cosson

I do want to emphasize that we've seen an explosion in the use of Google Maps and Google Earth for education. The earth is a special place. It is our home and it's why we're all here. And the ability to see what's really going on the earth, the good stuff and the bad stuff, at the level that you can, is phenomenal. — Eric Schmidt

Finland must not be allowed to disappear off the map. — Neville Chamberlain

It occurs to me if we kissed now, we'd be like a folded map of America. My Pennsylvania scab next to her New Jersey black eye. I wonder, then, how many other kids could join in. Where are the Montanas and the Colorados? Where is the Vermont? Florida? How many maps would we make? — A.S. King

There open up, deep inside a city, reflected streets, streets which are double, make-believe streets. One's imagination, bewitched and misled, creates illusory maps of the apparently familiar districts, maps in which the streets have their proper places and usual names but are provided with new and fictitious configurations by the inexhaustible inventiveness of the night. — Bruno Schulz

I love walking my feet off. Gimme a map and a box of Band-Aids and I'm all set! — Fran Drescher

I think if you had to map that out at the beginning and you said, "Right, sit down, this is what you're going to be doing," you'd probably freak out. But I'm someone who really enjoys not being himself. So if you consider that, then it all sort of makes sense. — Eric Bana

Whether an island such as Easter Island can be considered remote is simply a matter of perspective. Those who live there, the Rapa Nui, call their homeland Te Pito Te Henua, 'the navel of the world'. Any point on the infinite globe of the Earth can become a centre. — Judith Schalansky

All I ever wanted was a world without maps. — Michael Ondaatje

Considering that Timur had ignored every instrument of government except terror, it is remarkable his immediate successors managed to retain control of most of his empire. — Colin McEvedy

Carry with you maps and string, flashlights, friends who make you sing, and stars to help you find your place, music, hope, and amazing grace. — Mary Chapin Carpenter

I'm afraid of taking steps that are not on the map, but by taking those steps despite my fears, I have a much more interesting life. — Paulo Coelho

All maps are fiction when the world is seen from the sky. But if ten thousand dragons choose to believe in this one, I think you will find it nearer truth than otherwise. — Naomi Novik

If I had lady-spider legs, I would weave a sky where the stars lined up. Matresses would be tied down tight to their trucks, bodies would never crash through windshields. The moon would rise above the wine-dark sea and give babies only to maidens and musicians who had prayed long and hard. Lost girls wouldn't need compasses or maps. They would find gingerbread paths to lead them out of the forest and home again. They would never sleep in silver boxes with white velvet sheets, not until they were wrinkled-paper grandmas and ready for the trip. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Every important social movement reconfigures the world in the imagination. What was obscure comes forward, lies are revealed, memory shaken, new delineations drawn over the old maps: it is from this new way of seeing the present that hope emerges for the future ... Let us begin to imagine the worlds we would like to inhabit, the long lives we will share, and the many futures in our hands. — Susan Griffin