Quotes & Sayings About Travel Writing

You have to know where you are going to reach your destination. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Driving down deserted early morning roads. Round and round. Round downtown. Through naked streets. Lips pursed on two litre bottles of beer, but pursuing the lips of freedom's night. Swapping cars. Winding up at karaoke bars or Bolsi- the best place in town. For the food. For the folk. For the service. For the crema de papaya. And for that late night dawn's whiskey coffee. — Harry Whitewolf

It is far easier to travel than to write about it. — David Livingstone

Find your path in life and travel on it. — Lailah Gifty Akita

It is my hope that this book will help to demystify the origins of travel writing and show that when thousands of travelers follow a guidebook word-for-word, recommendation-for-recommendation, it not only harms contemporary international travel but can also do serious harm to places in developing countries. — Thomas Kohnstamm

Shaggy existentialists in frayed sandals, dilettantes by the score, spies by the portfolio. — Jan Morris

Increase the number of adventures you act on and you'll lighten the weight of regret. — Gina Greenlee

Prague is not, strictly speaking, travel writing but it is, among other things, an excellent example of what travel writing is becoming, if indeed it hasn't already done so ... People are no longer so easily satisfied by the mere travel impressions of some outsider much like themselves. Instead they gravitate towards writers who actually have lived not simply in, but inside, a location for an extended period, as one lives inside one's clothes. — George Fetherling

A challenge that tested Tom to his limit but in return gave him more than he could ever have imagined. — Bear Grylls

The research. It is always the best part of writing. And, of course, it is the great excuse to travel. — Michael Scott

The cruise was the conduit for what would become my third book. While I was traveling and writing for ctnow, women across the United States and from the Caribbean emailed not to ask about my geographic journey but my existential one. "How do you find the courage to travel on your own?" they wondered. "How do you keep from getting lonely? Don't you feel self-conscious eating out alone?" After the first 30 emails like these I thought, There's a book here. It would be eight years before I published Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road. But the inspiration for publication came during the cruise. — Gina Greenlee

And at this very moment, like a miracle, the rail-bus appeared. We waved our arms frantically, hardly daring to hope that it would stop. It did stop. We scrambled thankfully on board.
That is the irony of travel. You spend your boyhood dreaming of a magic, impossibly distant day when you will cross the Equator, when your eyes will behold Quito. And then, in the slow prosaic process of life, that day undramatically dawns - and finds you sleepy, hungry and dull. The Equator is just another valley; you aren't sure which and you don't much care. Quito is just another railroad station, with fuss about baggage and taxis and tips. And the only comforting reality, amidst all this picturesque noisy strangeness, is to find a clean pension run by Czech refugees and sit down in a cozy Central European parlor to a lunch of well-cooked Wiener Schnitzel. — Christopher Isherwood

Blood-coloured bottlebrush trees and scarlet hibiscus looked too bright for this devastated world. — Jane Wilson-Howarth

I think writing is really about a journey of understanding. So you take something that seems very far away, and the more you write about it, the more you travel into it, and you see it from within. — Pico Iyer

As well as writing, 2004 saw my first attempt at wine making: the elixir of life. Unfortunately, my effort tasted more like the elixir of death. — Craig Briggs

The little box that was given to me was by no means unique. I'd heard of prayer boxes, and I knew what they were for.
... Any scrap of paper will do, anywhere, anytime of the day or night. The important part, in a world of fractured thoughts, hurried moments, and scattershot prayers, is to take the time to think through, to write down, to clarify in your own mind the things you're asking for, the things you're grateful for, the things your're troubled about, the hopes you've been nurturing.
And then?
Put them in the box and ...
Let. Them. Go.
That's what trust is. It's letting go of the worry. It's the way of peace and also the way of God. such a hard road to travel for people like me, who are worriers. When I'm writing a story, I control the whole universe. In life ... not so much. Actually, not at all. Things happen that I hadn't anticipated and wouldn't choose and can't change. That's the tough part. — Lisa Wingate

I love to talk with children. I try to visit schools but it's hard for me to travel when I'm trying to write. Some authors are able to do both. — Judy Blume

I'd love to be a tabletop in Paris, where food is art and life combined in one, where people gather and talk for hours. I want lovers to meet over me. I'd want to be covered in drops of candle wax and breadcrumbs and rings from the bottom of wineglasses. I would never be lonely, and I would always serve a good purpose. — Maureen Johnson

Travel writing is harrowing. You are in paradise, more or less, having to prove it is paradise. It is hard to have a good time trying to figure out a way to say you are having a good time, whether you are having it or not, even in paradise. — Padgett Powell

When I'm writing, I like to travel alone. If you really want to find out about a place, you need to be as free as possible to be spontaneous. You also need to be lonely, because loneliness is a great teacher, too. — Paul Theroux

I knew I could always earn money from a job. What I didn't know was could I extend the dream of writing beyond my trip? — Gina Greenlee

Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice. — Charles Bukowski

You wind back the clock several decades when you visit a Lonely Place; and when you touch down, you half expect a cabin attendant to announce, We have now landed in Lonely Place's Down-at-Heels Airport, where the local time is 1943 and the temperature is ... frozen. — Pico Iyer

It is a transition, from modelling to singing, but for me it's a natural progression. The modelling was something I did to travel the world and make some money and end up doing what I want to do. It was a way for me to go gather the experience to write an album and now sing about it. — Erica Packer

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up. — Ernest Hemingway,

The adventures of a lifetime begin with "Yes. — Gina Greenlee

The treasured vistas of our solo journeys are not always about the landscape. — Gina Greenlee

I am not a fan of the magical quick fix in any fiction, including fantasy, scifi and comic books. Unless Dr. Who is involved, and then only because we get to use the phrase 'Timey-wimey wibbliness' which, I'm sure you'll agree, there are not enough occasions to drop into ordinary adult conversation. — Chris Dee

I would much rather not be the center of attention, and I'd much rather travel and be writing my novel, rather than standing on a stage and trying to get people to understand something. — Willis Earl Beal

The mixed blessing of a cruise of any kind but especially a river cruise, is that one gets to see a little of everything, but not enough of one thing. It's the soup course of traveling, whetting your appetite for something more but never giving you enough soup. — Rick Garvia The Road Gets Longer If I Stop

too young to live, too old to die — Jeffrey Rasley

You know that feeling when you first arrive in a new city? However tired you are, however shattered by the flight, you are impatient to get out and sample the streets, the life, the action. — Geoff Dyer

I've always liked the idea that writing is a form of travel. And I started my writing career as a mystery novelist for adults. — Rick Riordan

I really like to travel when I write. Something about seeing new things and being in new cultures and environments provokes new thoughts in your head. — Josh Radnor

We all have a book in us. The first step is recognising this. Writing it is a whole new journey. — Kathryn Joyce

My worries travel about my head on their well-worn path, and it is a relief to put them on paper. — Mary Ann Shaffer

Writing historical fiction has many common traits with writing sci-fi or fantasy books. The past is another country - a very different world - and historical readers want to see, smell and touch what it was like living there. — Sara Sheridan

One does have to learn to travel with a degree of humility and that reflected in writing and personality. — John Gimlette

Let those who wish have their respectability- I wanted freedom, freedom to indulge in whatever caprice struck my fancy, freedom to search in the farthermost corners of the earth for the beautiful, the joyous, and the romantic. — Richard Halliburton

And yet on that bench at Jacobacci, I was glad I had left everyone else behind. Although this was a town with a main street and a railway station, and people with dogs and electric lights it was near enough to the end of the earth to give me the impression that I was a solitary explorer in a strange land. That illusion (which was an illusion in the South Pole and at the headwaters of the Nile) was enough of a satisfaction to me to make me want to go forward. — Paul Theroux

I need a moment of time for myself every day, like a child playing with his things. When I travel, I routinely find a quiet place, open my diary and write something in it. — Orhan Pamuk

There is of course a deep spiritual need which the pilgrimage seems to satisfy, particularly for those hardy enough to tackle the journey on foot. — Edwin Mullins

Being a maverick traveller, one would like to place oneself in the place of a local; just listen without judgement. — Mary Jane Walker

Writing allows me the time to travel and see the world, which is what I always wanted to do. I'd really like to have been Sir Richard Francis Burton, but it's the wrong century. — Alan Dean Foster

I resist the idea that travel writing has got to be factual. — Jan Morris

For me they go hand in hand. When I travel it makes me want to write, when I read it makes me want to travel. — William Dalrymple

The poem is not, as someone put it, deflective of entry. But the real question is, 'What happens to the reader once he or she gets inside the poem?' That's the real question for me, is getting the reader into the poem and then taking the reader somewhere, because I think of poetry as a kind of form of travel writing. — Billy Collins

Sometimes it is just about taking the first step, only then can greatness find us. — Colleen Mariotti

There were signs everywhere but none that I could read or even hope to decipher. These multi-lined symbols unhinged my familiar world. — Gerry Abbey

To be taken seriously about doing something creative and probably travel a lot. That was my motivation. I knew I was good, I knew I could write. I also knew you could get laid really easily. — David Bowie

All in all, even some kinds of unexpected and ridiculous disappointments couldn't diminish the astonishment of being in this place with its spectacular nature. — Sahara Sanders

Almost astride the Equator, night fell like a portcullis. The sun dropped below the horizon and suddenly all was dark. — Tim Butcher

Within my words there is a longing
To be written, through the senses to travel across the mind
To be perceived by your heart, to rest in your deep. — Preeth Nambiar

Experiment with grounding yourself with who you are, not what you do. — Gina Greenlee

I know about the sweet home. I went to school with 'em boys, what became Lynyrd Skynyrd; I knew Allen Collins, the skinny girl-beautiful guitarist. I put Allen Collins in every travel piece I do. Travel writing is harrowing, going to Bermuda with a banjo on my knee. — Padgett Powell

Travel is a joy, full of surprises and astonishing new experiences. Perhaps some of the most enjoyable times are those where one comes close to disaster; the risks add spice. — Jane Wilson-Howarth

I ended up in the back seat of a chicken truck's cab heading through beautiful scenery and disastrous roads to my hotel. About an hour later, we stopped to sell a few hundred of the chickens to a butcher shop. — Jennifer S. Alderson

I know when people think of New York, they think of theater, restaurants, cultural landmarks and shopping," I told him. "But beyond the iconic skyline and the news from Wall Street, New York is a collection of villages. In our neighborhoods, we attend school, play Kick the Can, handball and ride our bikes. I grew up knowing the names and faces of the baker, the shoe repair family, the Knish man and the Good Humor man who sold me and the other kids in my neighborhood half a popsicle for a nickel. My father took me to the playground where he pushed me on the swing, helped balance me on the seesaw and watched as I hung upside down by my feet on the monkey bars. Yes," I told the interviewer, "people actually grow up in New York. — Gina Greenlee

Dare to explore the beautiful places of the world. — Lailah Gifty Akita

...That's the difference between backpackers and holiday makers. The former can't help but invite hassle whilst the latter pay to escape it. — Harry Whitewolf

I'd read books in Russian, and they would take me forever. I wanted to write a book that would last and would not be superficial. Siberian-travel writing is its own genre. — Ian Frazier

I once had a young musician come to me and say that he wanted to be a professional musician. I asked him to write his list. When he came back to me, the three things in his life he most wanted were: to be paid for his music; to travel around the world; to meet new people. We came to the decision, after thinking really creatively, that if he got a job on a cruise ship, he would fulfill those goals. — Phil Keoghan

Suffering has no value, but you have to suffer in order to know that. I never found it easy to travel, yet the difficulty in it made it satisfying because it seemed in that way to resemble the act of writing - groping around in the dark, wandering into the unknown, coming to understand the condition of strangeness. — Paul Theroux

Go for it. It will make a great story. — Gina Greenlee

What do you know about me, given that I believe in secrecy? ... If I stick where I am, if I don't travel around, like anyone else I make my inner journeys that I can only measure by my emotions, and express very obliquely and circuitously in what I write ... Arguments from one's own privileged experience are bad and reactionary arguments. — Gilles Deleuze

You do not just get to know what you did not know when you travel to the right scenery, but you get to know the real reasons behind what you did not know when you go on an expedition! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

a good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving" Taoist dictum quoted by Sam Miller — Sam Miller

To write is to carve a new path through the terrain of the imagination, or to point out new features on a familiar route. To read is to travel through that terrain with the author as a guide
a guide one might not always agree with or trust, but who can at least be counted on to take one somewhere. — Rebecca Solnit

One need not be a rabid Anglican to be extremely sensible to the charm of an English country church ... — Henry James

Well, that's it." I said after we had waited for another five minutes and found ourselves still in a state of pleasantly welcome existence. "The ChronoGuard has shut itself down and time travel is as it should be: technically, logically, and theoretically ... impossible." "Good thing, too," reply Landon. "It always made my head ache. In fact, I was thinking of doing self help book for science-fiction novelists eager to write about time travel. It would consist of a single word: Don't. — Jasper Fforde

Only the traveler knows the details of the journey. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Being more aware will enable you to have only astonishing impressions, avoiding any of the disappointing experiences like some of those we went through. — Sahara Sanders

I like photography and writing and travel, so I have a lot of cerebral occupations. I am going to become a sailor and do a world tour on my yacht if I don't get any more work. — Audrey Tautou

No matter how many strikes are hurled at you, only you decide when you're out. — Gina Greenlee

A letter allows us to travel through time. — Fennel Hudson

My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

Read. Learn. Write. Travel. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Despite my vast interest in other universes and new ideas and space, travel and time travel, which by the way I think is impossible, the basic thing is human character, which is the main thing of most writers. — Philip Jose Farmer

I went to Africa to work. Finding myself and falling in love were not items on the agenda. Those were the stuff of daydreams, borne of long, icy Canadian winters. At age 30, I felt I already knew my priorities, talents and limitations. The year in Africa forced me to question all of these assumptions. — Jacqueline L. Scott

I don't have any office; I can write everywhere. So, I put a piece of paper on the table, and then I travel. Literally, writing for me is like travelling. It's getting out of myself and living another life - maybe a better life. — J.M.G. Le Clezio

I want to keep going as I have, to travel, read, perform, write, and enjoy my family. I've promised myself only this: no more Laundromats, no more two-shows-a-night, and no more deadlines. I'll work at my own pace. — Jimmy Buffett

I travel whenever I can - every couple of years if it is possible. I always say I'm not to write books on the countries I visit, but somehow I always seem to use material I can found in these countries in my books. — Ursula Torday

No need to queue up; step forward and count yourself in. — Gina Greenlee

We'd never seen anything as green as these rice paddies. It was not just the paddies themselves: the surrounding vegetation - foliage so dense the trees lost track of whose leaves were whose - was a rainbow coalition of one colour: green. There was an infinity of greens, rendered all the greener by splashes of red hibiscus and the herons floating past, so white and big it seemed as if sheets hung out to dry had suddenly taken wing. All other colours - even purple and black - were shades of green. Light and shade were degrees of green. Greenness, here, was less a colour than a colonising impulse. Everything was either already green - like a snake, bright as a blade of grass, sidling across the footpath - or in the process of becoming so. Statues of the Buddha were mossy, furred with green. — Geoff Dyer

I never stay with people and I never look people up when I travel. I depend more on just chance meetings. The advantage is that people don't know who I am. I meet people casually and they're not doing me a big favor because I'm going to write something. — Paul Theroux

During those days of whirling about the globe, I had an epiphany: travel was the only area of my life where I had no expectations. I anticipated nothing while fully engaging each moment. What bred adventure, surprise and deep experience was not knowing, surrendering to now and letting go of control. — Gina Greenlee

What we glean from travellers' vivid descriptions has a special charm; whatever is far off and suggestive excites our imagination; such pleasures tempt us far more than anything we may daily experience in the narrow circle of sedentary life. — Alexander Von Humboldt

If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot
of different places, just write a Unix operating system. — Linus Torvalds

Just as you can practice three - word sentences or sentences that travel across time zones, so can you practice writing sentences that breathe unshakable conviction. — Stanley Fish

Somehow, we were passing the boundaries of language and finding clarity in shared thought, even if we were just talking about beer! — Gerry Abbey

When it is going well, it is the best job [writing] in the world. For those few hours, you are god, in control of everything. However, for me, the great joy of writing is that it has allowed me to travel the world in search of stories. — Michael Scott

Nothing is lost in a stumble, only in the refusal to get up. — Gina Greenlee

I made my personal discovery of Emily Carr while visiting Victoria in 1981 to write a travel article. Immediately, her strong colors attracted me; her spunk fascinated me. Her down-to-earth voice in her writing appealed to me as authentic and original. — Susan Vreeland

Writing is not always a writer's playtime. It's actually a work in progress. Few understand this and mistakenly believe we're wasting time. But it's never a waste of time when doing what you love. — David Lucero

Twitter proved without a shadow of a doubt it is much more than a social network, but a user-defined infrastructure that can be harnessed to change lives and expectations, to share and enhance unique experiences and viewpoints. - Twitchhiker — Paul Smith

Finally, after a glance at Notre Dame and a brisk trot through the Louvre, we sat down at a cafe on the Place de l'Opera and watched the people. They were amazing
never had we seen such costumes, such make-up, such wigs; and, strangest of all, the wearers didn't seem in the least conscious of how funny they looked. Many of them even stared at us and smiled, as though we had been the oddities, and not they. Mr. Holmes no doubt found it amusing to see the pageant of prostitution, poverty and fashion reflected in our callow faces and wide-open eyes. — Christopher Isherwood

When you travel with your family, you may not get the volume of work done you would if you were alone, but you can still do something while recharging. If nothing else, you can gather your own thoughts, write down ideas, observe people around you, and reflect on experiences. Working doesn't always mean putting words on paper. — Barbara DeMarco-Barrett

I guess the lesson is you can't go everywhere. You should still go everywhere you can. — Charles Finch

Deferring judgement to a later date resolves nothing and all you are left with is a box of jumbled slides and a collection of knick-knacks and odds and ends. Here a face. There a sunset. — Will Ferguson

What I'm getting at is like the distinction between tourist and a traveler. The tourist experience is superficial and glancing. The traveler develops a deeper connection with her surroundings. She is more invested in them
the traveler stays longer, makes her own plans, chooses her own destination, and usually travels alone: solo travel and solo participation, although the most difficult emotionally, seem the most likely to produce a good story. — Ted Conover