Quotes & Sayings About Traveling Alone

I guess I'm too selfish to travel well with other people, I told Anne later. — Alice Steinbach

The thing about traveling alone, is that you run into your insecurities and fears times ten the normal! You run into all the good things and all the bad things about yourself on a daily basis, and are allowed the opportunity to truly become your own friend. Traveling alone is a learning process; some people travel for leisure, I travel to run into myself! — C. JoyBell C.

there is something magical and addicting about going somewhere, being alone, and finding yourself in parts of the world you never knew existed, finding parts of yourself you never knew you would find. — AVA.

Rule #1 of Traveling-
Don't even think of answering questions that contain the word "plan"? — Sanhita Baruah

I'm a workaholic. Before long I'm traveling on my nervous energy alone. This is incredibly exhausting. — Eva Gabor

I had chosen to leave, and live alone in a foreign country. And in fleeing thousands of miles across the Pacific, I chose myself, and a chance at a different future. — Alison Singh Gee

Don't be scared to walk alone. Don't be scared to like it. — John Mayer

I'd learned so much from traveling to familiar places that I figured I'd learn twice as much by going to a place I knew nothing about. — Gerry Abbey

The summer of 1966, I hitch-hiked alone for two months all over Europe instead of working on a farm in Spain. It was a big game to see how much I could see on $400. This got me hooked on traveling. — Peter Menzel

We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We take the Golden Road to Samarkand. — James Elroy Flecker

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

Another one of the line-item vetoes in the "never drink alone" rule book is that you're allowed to drink alone while traveling. Who else could possibly join you? I loved drinking alone in distant bars, staying on speaking terms with my own solitude. — Sarah Hepola

You enjoy solitude?" she asked, leaning her cheek on her hand. "Traveling alone, eating alone, sitting off by yourself in lecture halls ... "
"Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment."
The tip of one earpiece in her mouth, sunglasses dangling down, she mumbled, "'Nobody likes being alone. I just hate to be disappointed.' You can use that line if you ever write your autobiography."
"Thanks," I said.
"Do you like green?"
"Why do you ask?"
"You're wearing a green polo shirt."
"Not especially. I'll wear anything."
"'Not especially. I'll wear anything.' I love the way you talk. Like spreading plaster nice and smooth. Has anybody ever told you that?"
"Nobody," I said. — Haruki Murakami

When you're (traveling) with someone else, you share each discovery, but when you are alone, you have to carry each experience with you like a secret, something you have to write on your heart, because there's no other way to preserve it. — Shauna Niequist

You are not the same person working alone as you are in a group; in a romantic setting versus an educational one; when you are with close friends or in an anonymous crowd; or when you are traveling abroad as when at home base. — Philip Zimbardo

In the '50s, I was traveling alone all over Mindanao, Basilan, all the way to Tawi-Tawi with just a camera and a notebook. I always stayed in the houses of Moros. — F. Sionil Jose

It's necessary to start most work alone. But I'm tickled to death when I can pull somebody in or join someone, whether it's borrowing poetry or traveling with an associate. — Jenny Holzer

I never feel more alone than when I'm traveling. Alone and, to some extent, helpless. The world expects a certain level of competence and can be merciless when this expectation is unmet. — Philip Schultz

When I'm by myself, I'm not threatening at all. I get many more invitations than I would if I were traveling with anyone else, especially with a man. But I'm rarely alone. I sit on a park bench and I'm not alone because I pick a park bench where somebody interesting is sitting. — Rita Gelman

In these pages, traveling "solo" does not necessarily mean "alone." The absence of other people often suggests regretful isolation. "Solo" by contrast, is a willful decision to be the architect of our own experience. — Gina Greenlee

Exploring is one of my favorite things to do, but I don't really want to be in a tour group. I like doing it alone or with whomever I'm traveling with. — Tia Mowry

I envision a world filled with women traveling alone and meeting each other on the path. — SARK

Traveling with a man is traveling alone. — Zoe Valdes

And it came to me then. That we were wonderful traveling companions but in the end no more than lonely lumps of metal in their own separate orbits. From far off they look like beautiful shooting stars, but in reality they're nothing more than prisons, where each of us is locked up alone, going nowhere. When the orbits of these two satellites of ours happened to cross paths, we could be together. Maybe even open our hearts to each other. But that was only for the briefest moment. In the next instant we'd be in absolute solitude. Until we burned up and became nothing. — Haruki Murakami

The first duty of the novelist is to entertain. It is a moral duty. People who read your books are sick, sad, traveling, in the hospital waiting room while someone is dying. Books are written by the alone for the alone. — Donna Tartt

Traveling in a third-world country is the closest thing there is to being married and raising kids. You have glorious hikes and perfect days on the beach. You go on adventures you would never try, or enjoy, alone. But you also can't get away from each other. Everything is unfamiliar. Money is tight or you get robbed. Someone gets sick or sunburned. You get bored. It is harder than you expected, but you are glad you didn't just sit home. — Meg Jay

We woke up before the sun, hitched the oxen to the wagon, herded the cattle out of the Platt's pasture where they had spent the night, and started off again on the road toward Peekskill. Peekskill was on the Hudson River. We would turn south there and go down the river about five miles to Verplancks Point. From North Salem to Peekskill was more than twenty miles. It would take us all day to make fifteen miles to our next stop, Father's friends south of Mohegan. We were supposed to pick up another escort. I hoped we would find it soon. I didn't like traveling through this country alone, and I kept looking around all the time for galloping horsemen. — James Lincoln Collier

The only time I get to be alone is while traveling."
"Except this week," Charlie said.
He turned his head and she saw herself reflected in his shades. "True. And you're not at all what I expected."
Not that Connor had had any idea what to expect. But he would've preferred if she hadn't been the beautiful blonde who wore skimpy red bikini tops and starred in his dreams last night. — Robin Bielman

Some journeys in life can only be traveled alone. — Ken Poirot

It's a long ride home with nothing but me for company. I bore myself sometimes. Not often. Just now and again. — David Hewson

It seemed an advantage to be traveling alone. Our responses to the world are crucially moulded by the company we keep, for we temper our curiosity to fit in with the expectations of others ... Being closely observed by a companion can also inhibit our observation of others; then, too, we may become caught up in adjusting ourselves to the companion's questions and remarks, or feel the need to make ourselves seem more normal than is good for our curiosity. — Alain De Botton

Touring isn't traveling. Everyone should know that. And I would absolutely recommend a month of solo touring - that is, no driver, no merch person, no tour manager - to anyone in the position to do such a thing. But just once. You grow a lot in those situations, like when you spend a Christmas alone (which I also recommend). But, again, only once. That will be enough. — Wooden Wand

One of the disadvantages of traveling alone is that when you fall there is none to assist you. — Roger Zelazny

Dreams and coffee and sunrises make up the rhythms of the road.
Music is a part of it, too: the popular music on the jukeboxes and radio stations. You hear it constantly, in diners and on car radios. The music has a rhythm that fits the steady drumming of tires over pavement. It seeps into your bloodstream. After a while it ceases to make any difference whether or not you like the stuff. When you're traveling alone, a nameless rider with a succession of strangers, it can give you a comforting sense of the familiar to hear the same music over and over.
At any given time, a few current hits will be overplayed to exhaustion by the rock & roll stations. In hitching across the continent, you might hear the same song fifty or sixty times. Certain songs become connected in your mind with certain trips. — Kenn Kaufman

This part I will do alone, leaving you behind. Don't follow. I'm well beyond you now, and traveling very fast. — Jeff VanderMeer

Traveling alone offers the chance to test the limits of what you think you know about yourself. — Andrew O'Hagan

My spirit gets nourished in faraway places. Sometimes I wonder if it's a biological need, perhaps a biological flaw, that compels me to seek the excitement and challenge that comes of being in a place where nobody knows me.

Other times I think that my compulsion to settle into communities that are different from the ones I know is related to my passion for experiential learning. I learn best and most happily by doing, touching, sharing, tasting. When I'm somewhere I've never been before, learning goes on all day, every day. — Rita Golden Gelman

Meandering cows, tenacious bicyclers, belching taxis, rickshaws, fearless pedestrians and the occasional mobile 'cigarette and sweets' stand all fought our taxi for room on the narrow two-lane road turned local byway. — Jennifer S. Alderson

We are not traveling alone, we cross paths with different people along the way. We may have an individual road to travel, but we cross paths with different people from time to time who would share different roles in our lives. These people may come and go, or even stay for a lifetime, but no matter what, they all came for a reason - to make this journey more meaningful. — Kcat Yarza

The hardest lesson is Clare's solitude. Sometimes I come home and Clare seems kind of irritated; I've interrupted some train of thought, broken into the dreary silence of her day. Sometimes I see an expression on Clare's face that is like a closed door. She has gone inside the room of her mind and is sitting there knitting or something. I've discovered that Clare likes to be alone. But when I return from time traveling she is always relieved to see me. — Audrey Niffenegger

When I travel, people say 'Yet another place in this world'. But I see 'Another world inside every place I go — Vivek Thangaswamy

You can't understand a city without using its public transportation system. — Erol Ozan

Don't travel alone ... meet up with others who are traveling also on the path of change, you can learn from each other a lot and together carry more learning experiences (social learning and collective intelligence). -Nadia Gabriela Dresscher — Lambert Of Maastricht

I had to stop traveling alone because I missed so many planes. When somebody runs up to you in the airport and begins to tell you their life story, you can't say, 'Excuse me, boo,' as they're weeping on your bosom. — Iyanla Vanzant

I think I'm probably going to have more luck on tour, on the road, than I am at home, because as hectic as traveling can be, I have a little bit more control, for life situations out there on the road. It's the one aspect of my life I feel like I do have some control of. I can wake up in my hotel room, I'm alone and I can ease into the day and do what I need to do. It's not like I've got to get up and drive the kids to school, feed the dog, get to the gym, go to practice, go pay a bill, you know what I mean? — Mike Ness

The whites, you see, are tempted by their egos and have no means to resist. We Japanese, on the other hand, know our egos are nothing. We bend our egos, all of the time, and that is where we differ. That is the fundamental difference, Hatsue. We bend our heads, we bow and are silent, because we understand that by ourselves, alone, we are nothing at all, dust in a strong wind, while the hakujin believes his aloneness is everything, his separateness is the foundation of his existence. He seeks and grasps, seeks and grasps for his separateness, while we seek union with the Greater Life - you must see that these are distinct paths we are traveling, Hatsue, the hakujin and we Japanese. — David Guterson

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 was a crazy creature with a head full of carnival spangles until I was thirty, and then the only man I ever really cared for stopped waiting and married someone else. So in spite, in anger at myself, I told myself I deserved my: fate for not having married when the best chance was at hand. I started traveling. My luggage was snowed under blizzards of travel stickers. I have been alone in Paris, alone in Vienna, alone in London, and all in all, it is very much like being alone in Green Town, Illinois. It is, in essence, being alone. Oh, you have plenty of time to think, improve your manners, sharpen your conversations. But I sometimes think I could easily trade a verb tense or a curtsy for some company that would stay over for a thirty-year weekend. — Ray Bradbury

If I have the choice of traveling to Russia, India or New Zealand alone for a week for preliminary discussions or to spend that week with my family, I routinely choose my family. — Olafur Eliasson

We take some big miracles for granted. We're on a planet that's spinning at a thousand miles per hour, traveling through space and we don't worry about God keeping our planet in orbit. We already trust God for the big miracles like our heart beating and today alone, we'll take a thousand breaths, but can we trust Him in the smaller things? — Mark Batterson

A subject to which few intellectuals ever give a thought is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander. Yet vagrancy is a deliverance, and life on the open road is the essence of freedom. To have the courage to smash the chains with which modern life has weighted us (under the pretext that it was offering us more liberty), then to take up the symbolic stick and bundle and get out. — Isabelle Eberhardt

Because of my capacity for listening to strangers' tales, or the details of their lives, my patience with their food and their crotchets, my curiosity that borders on nosiness, I am told that anyone traveling with me experiences an unbelievable tedium, and this is why I choose to travel alone. — Paul Theroux

Traveling all alone,are you?" One of them asked with what could be described only as a leer worthy of any penny dreadful.
Blast.
"Let me pass," I demanded. Where the devil was everyone?
"There's a toll,love," he insisted. "Didn't you know?"
We were well hidden by the luggage and a shroud of steam,thick as London fog. The third boy looked uncomfortable, as if he wanted to stop his companions but didn't know how. Fat lot of good his squirming would do me.
"Give us a kiss,then. — Alyxandra Harvey

Define your path and travel on this path. — Lailah Gifty Akita

It was only vanity and discouragement that sometimes made me feel alone with my endless love, but now that I was taking one of the risks my heart had urged upon me I could also feel I was not alone. If endless love was a dream, then it was a dream we all shared, even more than we all shared the dream of never dying or of traveling through time, and if anything set me apart it was not my impulses but my stubbornness, my willingness to take the dream past what had been agreed upon as the reasonable limits, to declare that this dream was not a feverish trick of the mind but was an actuality at least as real as that other, thinner, more unhappy illusion we call normal life. After all, the intimations of endless love were the same now as they were thousands of years before, while normal life had changed a thousand times and in a thousand different ways. Which then, was more real? — Scott Spencer

The ride back to Kathmandu was comfortable and relaxing. There were more overturned trucks (the gas-powered ones seem to tip the most often, I'm surprised there weren't more explosions), goats being herded across the highway by ancient women, children playing games in traffic, private cars and buses alike pulling over in the most inconvenient places for a picnic or public bath, and best of all the suicidal overtaking maneuvers (or what we would call 'passing') by our bus and others while going downhill at incredible speeds or around hairpin turns uphill with absolutely no power left to actually get around the other vehicle. — Jennifer S. Alderson

I thought that if I owned nothing, had nothing, was nothing, I would have nothing left to lose, and I wouldn't be scared anymore. Because my whole life I've been so damn scared. Scared to live because I was scared to die. But at the same I was so scared of living, so I wanted to die. Or maybe so scared of dying that I refused to live. You don't have to be afraid to fall, when you're already on the ground. You don't have to be scared to lose someone, when there's no one around to lose. — Charlotte Eriksson

Bikinis? Check. Sunscreen? Check. Dildo? Probably won't need it. — Felicia Ferraro

I felt we really couldn't be separated that much. I'd had a baby, and I was traveling and working alone while he was in the Army. It was very difficult-the phone calls and all of that. I really was very depressed. — Eydie Gorme

I have travel to the places I have been because, I had a vivid imagination of the places. — Lailah Gifty Akita

I've grown tired of traveling alone, won't you ride with me? — Jason Isbell

My life on earth is personal journey. — Lailah Gifty Akita

When you take the right stairs you will arrive at the precise destination. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Too many people try to assuage pain that can never be eradicated. All you can do is salute the grief, acknowledge that you carry it, too, and that even though we all travel that path alone, we are not alone in traveling it. — M.J. Rose