Us Passport Quotes & Sayings

From contact comes feeling. From feeling comes reaction. This is what keeps us in the cycle of birth and death. Our reactions to our feelings are our passport to rebirth. — Ayya Khema

Libraries are a force for good. They wear capes. They fight evil. They don't get upset when you don't send them a card on their birthdays. (Though they will charge you if you're late returning a book.) They serve communities. The town without a library is a town without a soul. The library card is a passport to wonders and miracles, glimpses into other lives, religions, experiences, the hopes and dreams and strivings of ALL human beings, and it is this passport that opens our eyes and hearts to the world beyond our front doors, that is one of our best hopes against tyranny, xenophobia, hopelessness, despair, anarchy, and ignorance. Libraries are the torch of the world, illuminating the path when it feels too dark to see. We mustn't allow that torch to be extinguished. — Libba Bray

having a passport is not a sign of surrender. On the contrary, it is liberating, since it creates the possibility of new experiences. It allows us to see how other people, sometimes wiser than we, react to similar problems. Since so much of what has happened in the last year is familiar to the rest of the world or from recent history, we must observe and listen. — Timothy Snyder

The value of your travels does not hinge on how many stamps you have in your passport when you get home
and the slow nuanced experience of a single country is always better than the hurried, superficial experience of forty countries. — Rolf Potts

The typewriter is indeed my passport into a world otherwise barred to me and my kind. — Suzanne Rindell

I had a passport where I wrote 'artist' under 'occupation' and I remember thinking, 'That's it, it's proved!' — Damien Hirst

Once I accidentally left my passport in Nice, France, when I was on my way to Prague. Upon arriving in Vienna, after taking an overnight, and being asked to present my travel documents and realizing I forgot them at the hotel, they kicked me off the train and sent me back! — Megalyn Echikunwoke

You and I are part of the colony of heaven. Right now, we may reside here on earth, but our passport indicates that our citizenship is in heaven. We are on the earth, but not of the earth. — Allen R. Hunt

Frank Sinatra took me to a whole new planet. I worked with him until he passed away in '98. He left me his ring. I never take it off. Now, when I go to Sicily, I don't need a passport. I just flash my ring. — Quincy Jones

The other day I found her passport in her drawer when I was putting away my dad's laundered handkerchiefs. I wish I hadn't. For the purpose of my story, she should have it with her. I sat on my dad's bed and flipped through page after empty page. No stamps. No exotic locales. No travel-worn smudges or creases. Just the ID information and my mother's black-and-white photo which if it were used in a psychology textbook on the meaning of facial expressions would be labelled: Obscenely, heartbreakingly hopeful. — Miriam Toews

After all, what is your personal identity? It is what you really are, your real self. None of us is what he thinks he is, or what other people think he is, still less what his passport says he is And it is fortunate for most of us that we are mistaken. We do not generally know what is good for us. That is because, in St. Bernard's language, our true personality has been concealed under the 'disguise' of a false self, the ego, whom we tend to worship in place of God. — Thomas Merton

I believe that the imagination is the passport we create to take us into the real world. I believe the imagination is another phrase for what is most uniquely us. — John Guare

The computer is your passport, not only to the future but to knowing what's going around you. — Michael Nutter

Books that take us to an exotic place and never let the grit of that place get under our fingernails...are far less successful. One leaves the places of the book and never feels like one's really gotten one's imaginative passport stamped. — Andrew Lazo

Sometimes you have to recycle celebrities to make them interesting, and they can be even better the second time around. Case in point: the fabulous and talented Miss Joey Heatherton, star of stage, screen, Vegas and mattress commercials. Close your eyes and imagine what it would be like to wake up one day and be Joey Heatherton. On July 8, 1985, it must not have felt so hot. Joey, goddess, was detained in the U.S. passport office at Rockefeller Center for allegedly becoming abusive at not receiving special treatment in the passport line. Supposedly, she threw a tantrum, grabbed passport-office clerk, Mary Polik, tore her hair out and smashed her head against the Formica counter. Oh, well, nobody's perfect. — John Waters

In the '70s I was in exile; every time I went back I wondered if they'd take my passport away. — Tahar Ben Jelloun

Dortmunder had helped by expressing doubts. "If the Puerto Ricans all come here," he'd said, for instance, "how come it's such a hot idea for us to go there?" Another time, he'd expressed the opinion that airplanes were too heavy to fly, and a little later he'd pointed out he didn't have a passport. "You don't need a passport," May told him. "Puerto Rico's part of the US." He stared at her. "The hell it is." But it turned out she was right about that; Puerto Rico wasn't exactly a state, but it was something in the United States of America - maybe it was "of. — Donald E. Westlake

To the south, along the curve of the coast, Hezbollah is launching Katyushas, but I'm loath to say too much about them. The Party of God has a copy of every journalist's passport, and they've already hassled a number of us and threatened one. — Tom Gross

Ultimately, the main reasons why I will be chubby for life are (1) I have virtually no hobbies except dieting. I can't speak any non-English languages, knit, ski, scrapbook, or cook. I have no pets. I don't know how to do drugs. I lost my passport three years ago when I moved into my house and never got it renewed. Video games scare me because they all seem to simulate situations I'd hate to be in, like war or stealing cars. So if I ever lost weight I would also lose my only hobby; (2) I have no discipline; I'm like if Private Benjamin had never toughened up but, in fact, got worse; (3) Guys I've dated have been into me the way I am; and (4) I'm pretty happy with the way I look, so long as I don't break a beach chair. — Mindy Kaling

The truth, I am convinced, is that there is no longer a poetical audience among the higher class of minds, that moral, political, and physical science have entirely withdrawn from poetry the attention of all whose attention is worth having; and that the poetical reading public being composed of the mere dregs of the intellectual community, the most sufficing passport to their favour must rest on the mixture of a little easily-intelligible portion of mawkish sentiment with an absolute negation of reason and knowledge. — Thomas Love Peacock

It's the difference between your wife's passport photograph and the portraits you took when you got
engaged. Both may have been created with similar technology, but what stands in that great gulf between them are the passion you have for your wife, the knowledge you have of her personality, and your willingness to use your craft, time, and energy to express that. One says, "She looks like this." The other says, "This is who she is to me. It's how I feel about her. See how amazing she is? — David DuChemin

I love my passport. I plan trips very last minute, so I always carry it with me. — Waris Ahluwalia

Proper nutrition is one of the most fundamental things on which anyone's healthy and happy life can be based.
If you want to radically change your being for the better, to feel satisfied about who you are, or to look slim and attractive no matter what age is stated in your passport, start with changing unhealthy eating habits to healthy ones - and make them your favorites. — Sahara Sanders

He which hath no stomach to this fight, let him depart, his passport shall be made and crowns for convoy put into his purse. We would not die in that man's company that fears his fellowship, to die with us. — William Shakespeare

I had wanted to live forever as a gypsy girl; I had wanted to live forever as a child, tumbling down a rabbit hole. I had been granted both wishes, only to find immortality was not what it had promised to be; instead of a passport to the future, it was a yoke that bound me to the past. — Melanie Benjamin

The inhabitant of London could order by telephone, sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products of the whole earth
he could at the same time and by the same means adventure his wealth in the natural resources and new enterprise of any quarter of the world
he could secure forthwith, if he wished, cheap and comfortable means of transit to any country or climate without passport or other formality. — John Maynard Keynes

There's this brutal imperial power, that my passport says I represent. But it will never represent where my heart lives, only vaguely where it went. — Ani DiFranco

Courtesy gives its owner a passport round the world. It transmutes aliens into trusting friends. — James Thomas Fields

A lot of Americans don't have a passport, never will have a passport. Not only will they not travel, they don't want to travel. — Henry Rollins

It is not truth, but opinion that can travel the world without a passport. — Walter Raleigh

The man took my passport and asked me the purpose of my visit, I wrote in my daybook, 'To mourn,' and then, 'To try to live,' he gave me a look and asked if I would consider that business or pleasure, I wrote, 'Neither.' 'For how long do you plan to mourn and try to live?' I wrote, 'For the rest of my life. — Jonathan Safran Foer

One of the reasons I decided to apply for American citizenship after something like a quarter of century of living here on a British, European Union passport and a green card, was my identification with the United States in the post-September 11th period. — Christopher Hitchens

O sancta simplicitas! What strange simplification and falsification mankind lives on! One can never cease to marvel once one has acquired eyes for this marvel! How we have made everything around us bright and free and easy and simple! How we have known how to bestow on our senses a passport to everything superficial, on our thoughts a divine desire for wanton gambling and false conclusions! - how we have from the very beginning understood how to retain our ignorance so as to enjoy an almost inconceivable freedom, frivolity, impetuosity, bravery, cheerfulness of life, so as to enjoy life! — Friedrich Nietzsche

Whose truth do you want to know, Dr. Amin Jaafari? The truth of a Bedouin who thinks he's free and clear because he's got an Israeli passport? The truth of a serviceable Arab per excellence who's honored wherever he goes, who gets invited to fancy parties by people who want to show how tolerant and considerate they are? The truth of someone who thinks he can change sides like changing a shirt, with no trace left behind? Is that the truth you're looking for, or is it the one you're running away from? What planet do you live on, sir? ... Our cities are being buried by machines on caterpillar tracks, our patron saints don't know which way to turn, and you, simply because you're nice and warm in your golden cage, refuse to see the inferno consuming us. — Yasmina Khadra

God gave us imaginations because he wants us to see the photos of our destinies respectively and make proper graphical designs of them. You owe it to yourself to enlarge that image you carry into bigger sizes. — Israelmore Ayivor

Fear holds us back from living the lives we want. Use your 20s to make bold decisions, follow different paths, learn from heartbreak, and figure out who you are. When you're 30, do you want to look back at the same boring job, the stale relationship that isn't working, and no stamps in your passport? If you want something different, if you want a life that is filled with experiences, if you want to learn and grow, if you want to make a difference ... conquer the fears, believe in yourself, and just do it. You may be questioning something right now. You may be battling thoughts in your mind about taking a leap. Ask yourself what you have to lose if you leap. Ask yourself what kind of stories you want to have. Ask yourself if you're worth it, if you deserve it. — Katie Robinson

He has a passport," my classmates would whisper. "Quick, let's run before he judges us! — David Sedaris

Should such an ignorant people lead the world? How did it come to this in the first place? 82 percent of us don't even have a passport! Just a handful can speak a language other than English. — Michael Moore

Besides inquiries as to our general well-being, the first thing asked about us, in our first seconds of being alive, is whether we're a boy or girl. Our first passport through this world is our genitals. — Steve Erickson

In this nineteenth century, the religious idea is undergoing a crisis. People are unlearning certain things, and they do well, provided that, while unlearning them they learn this: There is no vacuum in the human heart. Certain demolitions take place, and it is well that they do, but on condition that they are followed by reconstructions.
In the meantime, let us study things which are no more. It is necessary to know them, if only for the purpose of avoiding them. The counterfeits of the past assume false names, and gladly call themselves the future. This spectre, this past, is given to falsifying its own passport. Let us inform ourselves of the trap. Let us be on our guard. The past has a visage, superstition, and a mask, hypocrisy. Let us denounce the visage and let us tear off the mask. — Victor Hugo

And we need this. It could save us a year. Without it all we got is a regular manhunt. For a guy already four months AWOL, with a brand-new foreign passport. Instead of that we could have a Saudi kid in a pink shirt and pointed shoes lead us directly to him. Right here and now. Who wouldn't take that deal? The future means nothing if we don't live to see it." "So you broke the law, but only because you thought you had a good reason. You and everyone else. There are lots of good reasons. Too many good reasons. Which is why we have a special structure, to decide between them, when they compete one against the other. That structure is called the National Security Council. We weigh things up and we judge priorities. You just blew a year's hard work, major. You should resign. Before the after-action report comes out. You'll get a better deal that way." "OK," Reacher said. "I will, if it turns out bad. — Lee Child

Conny and I stood in line, along with other people, outside Checkpoint Charlie, the gate for foreigners into East Berlin. Many of those in line were Dutch, and I saw they were being passed without difficulty. Everything seemed routine: Hand your passport to a guard, walk down the line, and receive your passport back with a stamp that allowed you to spend the one day in East Berlin. I hoped it would be as easy for us when it was our turn to be checked. Finally we were in front of the window. The guard looked at our passports, looked in a book and then turned and said something to another man behind him. "Is there a problem?" I asked the man. He turned and gave me a stern look. "Come with — Corrie Ten Boom

I came up in Brooklyn singing doo-wop music from the time I was 13 to the time I was 20. That music served a purpose of keeping a lot of people out of trouble, and also it was a passport from one neighborhood to another. — Richie Havens

Getting into Sundance is a certain sort of passport to a level of anxiety I've never experienced, even having had a baby in the NICU for a week. For about ten minutes, you're a world-class director. Then you become an entry-level, harried, low level concierge with absolutely no juice. — Jill Soloway

I've got lots of good friends. I could have affairs. I can read a book all night, put the cat on the end of the bed. I can pick up my passport and go to France. I don't have to ask anybody. — Joanna Lumley

But the remarkable thing about the beetles was their sensitivity to all the grammar and directives and slogans and even unstated desires of the ant world, which they learned to manipulate. They first memorized the proper antenna-vibration and foreleg-tap which the ants themselves used to request food. The poor workers, busy going here and there and back again all day and never getting a chance to think, automatically assumed that these fearsome strangers had been authorized by the Central Committee since they knew the password, and so they regurgitated a drop or two of fruit juice on cue, much the same as when one is traveling across Europe or Asia on the train and a person in uniform requests one's passport, one's ticket, takes them away, and comes back, or else does not come back, having sold them; a badge and a superior manner can obtain anything in this world. — William T. Vollmann

It is human nature to imagine, to put yourself in another's shoes. The past may be another country. But the only passport required is empathy. — Geraldine Brooks

Genius is its own passport, and has always been ready to change habitats until the natural one is found. — Nikola Tesla

I remember when you used to have your profession on your passport and I always thought that being a painter was the best one to be, because my heroes were Goya and Francis Bacon. — Damien Hirst

I had never been out of the country before. And maybe this trip didn't technically count because, well, America had officially imploded and I hadn't needed a passport to cross the border, but I was more than a little disappointed we hadn't run into a mariachi band yet. Donde esta el Zombies? — Rachel Higginson

Man in his madness doesn't realize that God has made him from amoeba to this stage for some purpose. There is a big purpose behind it. And the purpose is that now you have to know your Spirit, by which you enter into the Kingdom of God. You have to enter into the Kingdom of God. How? What is your passport? Is your Spirit. Because when the Spirit starts shining within you, you start transforming. You start transforming into a new being - into a new personality with a new awareness and you are a different person. Your priorities change. — Nirmala Srivastava

You don't need a passport and you don't need no visas, you don't need to designate or emigrate before you can see Jesus. — George Harrison

I get called 'Memphis Eve,' but my first name is Eve. I know Memphis is in there somewhere, but on my passport I'm 'Eve Sunny Day Hewson.' — Eve Hewson

There is a way by which any man, however sinful and unworthy, may draw near to God the Father. Jesus Christ has opened that way by the sacrifice He made for us upon the cross. The holiness and justice of God need not frighten sinners and keep them back. Only let them cry to God in the name of Jesus, - only let them plead the atoning blood of Jesus, - and they shall find God upon a throne of grace, willing and ready to hear. The name of Jesus is a never-failing passport to our prayers. In that name a man may draw near to God with boldness, and ask with confidence. God has engaged to hear him. Think of this. Is not this encouragement? — J.C. Ryle

All effective actions require the passport of morality. — Saul

But perhaps there is another, more personal reason for my disagreement with Ramin: I cannot imagine myself feeling at home in a place that is indifferent to what has become my true home, a land with no borders and few restrictions, which I have taken to calling "the Republic of Imagination." I think of it as Nabokov's "somehow, somewhere" or Alice's backyard, a world that runs parallel to the real one, whose occupants need no passport or documentation. The only requirements for entry are an open mind, a restless desire to know and an indefinable urge to escape the mundane. — Azar Nafisi

Oscar and I are very close, and yet I know that part of him is still withdrawn, even from me. As though part of him was still in another place. Another country. Journeying, perhaps. Or in exile. Across the sea. And I can't be with him, because I haven't got the right sort of passport. — Rosamunde Pilcher

The windows next to her is open a crack, spitting in rain
'Close the windows Rosa'
She slides a small book out of her backpack, turning it so i can see the front
An Australian passport. She opens it to the photo page: the horrible drunk from the plane.
I lunge as Rosa pushes it out the window
'I win,' Rosa says. — Justine Larbalestier

In England, it's now Sir Ben. Mister has just disappeared. It's not even on my passport anymore. They've taken Mister away from me. — Ben Kingsley

Illness is the night side of life, a more onerous citizenship. Everyone who is born holds dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick. Although we all prefer to use the good passport, sooner or later each of us is obliged, at least for a spell, to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place. — Susan Sontag

Getting a new passport took me a stupid amount of time. I had to go back five times with different photographs because they kept saying I was smiling, which is against the rules. I was not smiling. — Sally Phillips

My fairy-tale life ended the moment I wanted to apply for a passport. — Joan Chen

Someone once told me that movies are a universal passport. And it's true, wherever you go. — Benh Zeitlin

Cancer is a passport to intimacy. It is an invitation, maybe even a mandate, to enter the most vital arenas of human life, the most sensitive and the most frightening, the ones that we never want to go to - but when we do go there, we feel incredibly transformed. — Bruce Feiler

Brighten your picture! Refuse to be blurred; agree to be bright! — Israelmore Ayivor

There is nothing more miserable in the world than to arrive in paradise and look like your passport photo. — Erma Bombeck

From the perspective of the world's national security apparatuses you exist in several locations. You appear on property and income-tax registries, on passport and ID card databases. You show up on passenger manifests and telephone logs . . . You are fingertip swirls, facial ratios, dental records, voice patterns, spending trails, e-mail threads. — Mohsin Hamid

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

At the time, the question of woman's emancipation was of great interest to reformers. For the nihilist the issues were regarding work and sexual freedom. Because a woman's passport (which was used for general travel and not just travel abroad) was legally controlled by men - a father, or husband, had ultimate control of a woman's life. The nihilists solved this problem by having 'fictitious' marriages. This allowed for an emancipation of women de jure if not de facto. This resulted in women having the freedom of mobility to pursue some academic pursuits (which were curtailed during the White Terror) and some enterprise. Finally, the nihilists adopted the credo that adultery was a natural, and even desirable trait, in contrast to the spirit of their time, or their own cultural composition (i.e. they were prudes). — Anonymous

What's happened to my life? These ten-year chunks that are doled out to you in passports are a cruel form of memento mori. How many more new passports will I have? One (1965)? Two (1975)? Such a long way off, 1975, yet your passport life seems all too brief. How long did he live? He managed to renew six passports. — William Boyd