Wandering Off Quotes & Sayings

I picked up The Hobbit. And I began to read. I was swept off to a green, green Shire in a far, far land, and my soul has never returned. I suppose it never will. Yes, my soul at the time wandered more in the smoking wastelands of Mordor or the Dead Marshes than Hobbiton, but wandering in Middle Earth, was superior to my own world in every way. — Steve Bivans

The thought of his mind wandering while long sharp objects were trying to knock him off his horse alarmed me. — Courtney Cole

What if one's tendency to go wandering off is truly a gift? What if the driving force beneath the curiosity that leads a person to wander off the beaten path is not immaturity, but the wild, untamable Spirit of God, drawing them into the foliage to be refined, to discover fresh insights, and pioneer a new way forward for a new group of people? — Brandan Roberston

125. Of course, you could just take off the blindfold and say, 'I think this game is stupid and I'm not playing it anymore.' And it must also be admitted that hitting the wall or wandering off in the wrong direction or tearing off the blindfold is as much a part of the game as is pinning the tail on the donkey. — Maggie Nelson

One day Lal shahbaz was wandering in the desert with his friend Sheikh Bhaa ud-Din Zakariya. It was winter, and evening time, so they began to build a fire to keep warm. They found some wood, but then they realised they had no fire. So Baha ud- Din suggested that Lal Shahbaz turn himself into a falcon and get fire from hell. Off he flew, but an hour later he came back empty handed. "There is no fire in hell," he reported. "Everyone who goes there brings their own fire, and their own pain, from this world. — William Dalrymple

Now don't go wandering off, William," she said with a meaningful glance. "I don't want to lose you in the crowd."
Will's jaw set. "I'm getting the oddest feeling that you're enjoying this," he said under his breath.
"Nothing odd about it." Feeling unbelievably bold, Tessa chucked him under the chin with the tip of her lace fan. "Simply behave yourself. — Cassandra Clare

But I have no patience for cheaters. I don't care what people say - cheating never 'just happens.' If your eye's wandering, then there's something wrong with your relationship. Either work things out with your partner or have the balls to break things off before jumping into bed with someone else. It's pretty simple. — Ember Casey

He had strong, steady hands, and I could tell from looking at them there was little he couldn't do. Mossy always said you could tell everything you needed to know about a man from his hands. Some hands, she told me, were leaving hands. They were the wandering sort that slipped into places they shouldn't, and they would wander right off again because those hands just couldn't stay still. Some hands were worthless hands, fit only to hold a drink or flick ash from a cigar, and some were punishing hands that hit hard and didn't leave a mark and those were the ones you never stayed to see twice.
But the best hands were knowing hands, Mossy told me with a slow smile. Knowing hands were capable; they could soothe a horse or woman. They could take things apart
including your heart
and put them back together better than before. Knowing hands were rare, but if you found them, they were worth holding, at least for a little while. — Deanna Raybourn

He keeps some goats, and a garden patch. In autumn he goes wandering over the island, alone, in the forests, on the mountainsides, through the valleys of the rivers. I lived there once with him, when I was younger than you are now. I didn't stay long, I hadn't the sense to stay. I went off seeking evil, and sure enough I found it ... But you come escaping evil; seeking freedom; seeking silence for a while, until you find your own way. There you will find kindness and silence, Tenar. There the lamp will burn out of the wind awhile. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Must've been off my head, wandering around the harbour so long. Didn't even get the nightgowns. Are the kids okay? Damn, I wish I didn't always have to be home at the right time. At the Day of Judgement, God will say Stacy MacAindra, what have you done with your life? And I'll say, Well, let's see, Sir, I think I loved my kids. And He'll say, Are you certain of that? And I'll say, God, I'm not certain about anything any more. So He'll say, To hell with you, then. We're all positive thinkers up here. Then again, maybe He wouldn't. Maybe He'd say, Don't worry, Stacy, I'm not all that certain, either. Sometimes I wonder if I even exist. And I'd say, I know what you mean, Lord. I have the same trouble with myself. — Margaret Laurence

If you don't want my services, then it's only fair you cut me loose so I can make another girl or two happy this summer. Or three." He shifts my papers into a neater pile.
"What will they do once I take you off the market?" I ask. "I can only imagine the poor girls wandering around like a lost herd of sheep all summer, wondering where you went." I risk another glance at the staring girls and shudder. "Do they even blink? Baa. Baa. Baa. — Anne Eliot

The competition for the future of crime fiction is fierce, as it should be, but don't take your eyes off Craig McDonald. He's wily, talented and-rarest of the rare-a true original. He writes melancholy poetry that actually has melancholy poets wandering around, but don't turn your backs on them, either. I am always eager to see what he's going to do next. — Laura Lippman

Ah, but Senor!" exclaimed the niece, "your Grace should send them to be burned along with the rest; for I shouldn't wonder at all if my uncle, after he has been cured off this chivalry sickness, reading one of these books, should take it into his head to become a shepherd and go wandering through the woods and meadows singing and piping, or, what is worse, become a poet, which they say is an incurable disease and one that is very catching. — Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The gaze of Daniio's slow cousin eye seemed to be wandering off, as if distracted by pretty flowers, or perhaps a rainbow.* — Jay Kristoff

So what? You act all mysterious to seem more interesting?"

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You're always wandering off or running away," he said. "But you're a lot more
interesting when you're just being yourself you know. When you're actually here."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Emma said coldly. "Where else would I be?"

"You know what I mean," he said, a rough edge to his voice. "It's like you're so busy trying not to act like your family that you've never even stopped to consider that it might not be such a bad thing."

"Well what about you?" she shot back, aware of the bitterness in her words.
"You complain about your dad not wanting you around, and then you complain when he wants you to stay home for school. You can't have it both wars."

"Well neither can you," he said. " You can't keep everyone at arms length and then expect them to be there for you when you need them. — Jennifer E. Smith

And if Amsterdam was hell, and if hell was a memory, then he realized that perhaps there was some purpose to his being lost. Cut off from everything that was familiar to him, unable to discover even a single point of reference, he saw that his steps, by taking him nowhere, were taking him him nowhere but into himself. He was wandering inside himself, and he was lost. Far from troubling him, this state of being lost because a source of happiness, of exhilaration. He breathed it into his very bones. As if on the brink of some previously hidden knowledge, he breathed it into his very bones and said to himself, almost triumphantly: I am lost. — Paul Auster

Speak you too,
speak as the last,
say out your say.

Speak-
But don't split off No from Yes.
Give your say this meaning too:
Give it the shadow.

Give it shadow enough,
Give it as much
As you know is spread round you from
Midnight to midday and midnight.

Look around:
See how things all come alive-
By death! Alive!
Speaks true who speaks shadow.

But now the place shrinks, where you stand:
Where now, shadow-stripped, where?
Climb. Grope upwards.
Thinner you grow, less knowable, finer!
Finer: a thread
The star wants to descend on:
So as to swim down beliow, down here
Where it sees itself shimmer:in the swell
Of wandering words. — Paul Celan

For what it was worth, she got the impression that Niessa liked her, or at least approved of her, in the same way a chess-player approves of one of his pieces when it stays where it's been put and doesn't go wandering off all over the board. — K.J. Parker

You never know when you might come home and find Mam sitting by the fire chatting with a woman and a child, strangers. Always a woman and child. Mam finds them wandering the streets and if they ask, Could you spare a few pennies, miss? her heart breaks. She never has money so she invites them home for tea and a bit of fried bread and if it's a bad night she'll let them sleep by the fire on a pile of rags in the corner. The bread she gives them always means less for us and if we complain she says there are always people worse off and we can surely spare a little from what we have. — Frank McCourt

When one devotes oneself to meditation, mental burdens, unnecessary worries, and wandering thoughts drop off one by one; life seems to run smoothly and pleasantly. A student may now depend on intuition to make decisions. As one acts on intuition, second thought, with its dualism, doubt and hesitation, does not arise. — Nyogen Senzaki

Princess, you have decided to follow the hard path. I cannot promise you the life a royal princess deserves,' he began slowly. 'I am a wandered myself, stuck in an eternal search. I am a vagabond who doesn't know where I am going. My past beckons my present, but I can see only a blurred future. All my life, I have been slighted as a person of low birth- and the stigma will rub off on you as well. Yet, I am not ashamed of who I am ... — Kavita Kane

A testimony is a precious gift of the Spirit, a sign that we have in fact been born again (1 John 5:1). It is a transition from darkness to light, from an aimless and wandering maneuver to a determined, Spirit-guided pursuit. We have put off skepticism and put on a believing heart. We have died as pertaining to cynicism and come alive as pertaining to gospel gladness and optimism. We have put to death the old man of doubt and quickened the new man of assurance and certitude. — Robert L. Millet

Lincoln grinned. "The Academy owns a number of buildings. There are walkways between them." I couldn't take my eyes off the sky folk. "There are people wandering around in the sky, Linc. Explain this to me." He laughed one of his low, secretive laughs. One that echoed through my entire body. One that told me he adored me. One that somehow I knew, out of everyone in the world, was reserved for me. The laugh that broke my heart. Breathe. "I'm glad you find me amusing. Less laughing, more telling!" He laughed again and I was about a second away from either throwing a punch or throwing myself at him when a woman's voice caught our attention. "I — Jessica Shirvington

And such is your definition of matrimony and dancing. Taken in that light, certainly their resemblance is not striking; but I think I could place them in such a view. You will allow that in both man has the advantage of choice, woman only the power of refusal; that in both it is an engagement between man and woman, formed for the advantage of each; and that when once entered into, they belong exclusively to each other till the moment of its dissolution; that it is their duty each to endeavor to give the other no cause for wishing that he or she had bestowed themselves elsewhere, and their best interest to keep their own imaginations from wandering towards the perfections of their neighbors, or fancying that they should have been better off with any one else. — Jane Austen

You know, I have a lot of books on my iPad, but when I try to read them, I find myself wandering off to play games. Those are books I'm interested in. I can't imagine what would have happened to me in college if my biology class had been on the same computer as 'Words With Friends' and 'Doom.' — Gail Collins

On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore, or Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line. He occasionally gave a smart nod, as if in confirmation of some opinion, though he was not thinking of anything in particular. An empty egg-basket was slung upon his arm, the nap of his hat was ruffled, a patch being quite worn away at its brim where his thumb came in taking it off. Presently he was met by an elderly parson astride on a gray mare, who, as he rode, hummed a wandering tune. — Thomas Hardy

I thought privately to myself that with so many omens and prophecies to warn them off, heroes were really awfully stupid to go wandering into dark caves. — Moira Katson

'The Waltons' was profoundly important after years of wandering around. I was 44 and cut off from family and friends. It nurtured me back to a sense of family and who I am. It was a transforming experience. — Ralph Waite

A wandering dog of a night wind came in off the sagebrush mesa carrying a bar of band music, and laid it on her doorstep like a bone. — Wallace Stegner

I'm rambling again. Wandering off the point. But this is the true story of my wasted life ... — Mordecai Richler

Many of you have loved ones who are wandering off the path to eternal life. You wonder what more you can do to bring them back. You can depend on the Lord to draw closer to them as you serve Him in faith. — Henry B. Eyring

I stopped wanting to float away from my life, because in the end my life was all I had. I'd walk the Fairmont campus and look up to the sky and I wouldn't see myself drifting off like some lost balloon. Instead I saw the size of the world and found comfort in its hugeness. I'd think back to those times when I felt like everything was closing in on me, those times when I thought I was stuck, and I realized that I was wrong. There is always hope. The world is vast and meant for wandering. There is always somewhere else to go. — Nick Burd

Edges
I am a child throwing rocks into the stream.
Challenging the rushing water.
Raising my fist and daring fate to do it worst.
I am a dancer in the waves of the ocean.
Swaying in time with the tide.
Pirouetting, the current my only friend.
I am the sun, rising across the canyon
Ascending, and shinning down.
Giving the illusion of perception and motion.
I am thoughts like a rolling river.
Water cascading over the rocks of my soul.
Shaping, forming, conforming.
I am the peace of the rain forest.
Basking in solitude
Tranquil, serene, transfixing angles.
Reflecting from within.
Dripping and dropping. Shaking it off.
I am the dust of the galaxy.
Yearning to know itself.
I am the wind.
Wandering. Searching.
A storm brewing from within. — Tosha Michelle

Ballimore! Ballimore, where's the inkwell?' Dobbilan's voice echoed down the corridor, interrupting Cimorene in mid-sentence. 'Where are you? Why can't I find anything around here when I want it?'
'Because you never look in the right place, dear,' Ballimore called. 'The inkwell is in the kitchen next to the grocery list, where it's been for the past six months, and I'm in the dining room. Which is where you'd be if you'd done what I asked you to, instead of wandering off in all directions. — Patricia C. Wrede

Otherwise, one of you, most likely the man, would go wandering off on a trajectory of his own, taking his addictive body with him and leaving you with bad withdrawal, which you could counteract by exercise. If you didn't work it out it was because one of you had the wrong attitude. Everything that went on in your life was thought to be due to some positive or negative power emanating from inside your head. — Margaret Atwood

She was giving him a look. It took Eustace a second to figure out what it was. Her off-kilter gaze traveled the length of his body, then lingered pointedly. The gesture was supposed to be seductive but was more like livestock trying to sell itself. — Justin Cronin

We are not tied to a desk or to a bench; we stay there only because we think we are tied. In Montana I had a horse, which was hobbled every night to keep him from wandering; that is, straps joined by a short chain were put around his forefeet, so that he could only hop. The hobbles were taken off in the morning, but he would still hop until he saw his mate trotting off. This book is intended to show how any one can trot off if he will. — Bolton Hall

All this is to say, if your present community sees your spiritual journey as a problem because you are wandering off their beach blanket, it may be time to find another community. One should never do that impulsively. But if after a time you are sensing that you do not belong, that you are a problem to be corrected rather than a valued member of the community, maybe God is calling you elsewhere and to find for yourself that "they" aren't so bad after all. That decision is very personal (sometimes involving whole families) and can take some courage to make, but it is worth the risk. One thing is certain: if you stay where you are without any change at all, the pressure to either conform or keep quiet will work in you like a slow-acting poison. And if you go too far down that road, it can be a tough haul coming back from bitterness and resentment - especially for children. — Peter Enns

Everybody is waiting for the end to come, but what if it already passed us by? What if the final joke of Judgment Day was that it had already come and gone and we were none the wiser? Apocalypse arrives quietly; the chosen are herded off to heaven, and the rest of us, the ones who failed the test, just keep on going, oblivious. Dead already, wandering around long after the gods have stopped keeping score, still optimistic about the future. — Jonathan Nolan

Entertaining a notion, like entertaining a baby cousin or entertaining a pack of hyenas, is a dangerous thing to refuse to do. If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. But if you refuse to entertain a notion - which is just a fancy way of saying that you refuse to think about a certain idea - you have to be much braver than someone who is merely facing some blood-thirsty animals, or some parents who are upset to find their little darling at the bottom of a well, because nobody knows what an idea will do when it goes off to entertain itself. — Lemony Snicket

I told her about the best and the worst. The slow and sleepy places where weekdays rolled past like weekends and Mondays didn't matter. Battered shacks perched on cliffs overlooking the endless, rumpled sea. Afternoons spent waiting on the docks, swinging my legs off a pier until boats rolled in with crates full of oysters and crayfish still gasping. Pulling fishhooks out of my feet because I never wore shoes, playing with other kids whose names I never knew. Those were the unforgettable summers. There were outback towns where you couldn't see the roads for red dust, grids of streets with wandering dogs and children who ran wild and swam naked in creeks. I remembered climbing ancient trees that had a heartbeat if you pressed your ear to them. Boomboom-boomboom. Dreamy nights sleeping by the campfire and waking up covered in fine ash, as if I'd slept through a nuclear holocaust. We were wanderers, always with our faces to the sun. — Vikki Wakefield

When we enter a forest phase in our lives we enter a period of wandering and a time of potential soul growth. Here it is possible to find what we have cut off from, to "remember" a once vital aspect of ourselves. We may uncover a wellspring of creativity that has been hidden for decades. — Jean Shinoda Bolen

Don't be amazed if you see my eyes always wandering. In fact, this is my way of reading, and it is only in this way that reading proves fruitful to me. If a book truly interests me, I cannot follow it for more than a few lines before my mind, having seized on a thought that the text suggests to it, or a feeling, or a question, or an image, goes off on a tangent and springs from thought to thought, from image to image, in an itinerary of reasonings and fantasies that I feel the need to pursue to the end, moving away from the book until I have lost sight of it. The stimulus of reading is indispensable to me, and of meaty reading, even if, of every book, I manage to read no more than a few pages. But those few pages already enclose for me whole universes, which I can never exhaust. — Italo Calvino

For the eternity that Lux Lisbon looked at him, Trip Fontaine looked back, and the love he felt at that moment, truer than all subsequent loves because it never had to survive real life, still plagued him, even now in the desert, with his looks and health wasted. 'You never know what'll set the memory off,' he told us. 'A baby's face. A bell on a cat's collar. Anything.'
They didn't exchange a single word. But in the weeks that followed, Trip spent his days wandering the halls, hoping for Lux to appear, the most naked person with clothes on he had ever seen. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.
How hard it is to tell what it was like,
this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn
(the thought of it brings back all my old fears),
a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer.
But if I would show the good that came of it
I must talk about things other than the good. — Dante Alighieri

Then he would ask for songs and I would pluck them out for him on a lute I borrowed from my father's wagon. He would even sing from time to time. He had a bright, reckless tenor that was always wandering off, looking for notes in the wrong places. More often than not he stopped and laughed at himself when it happened. He was a good man, and there was no conceit in him. Not long after he joined our troupe, I asked Abenthy what it was like being an arcanist. He gave me a thoughtful look. Have you ever known an arcanist? — Patrick Rothfuss

Off come her skirts and petticoats, her lace cuffs and collar, her shoes and whalebone stay, until she lies on her side in nothing but a cotton shift and endless strands of pearls. Dust hangs in a crack of light between red velvet drapes, like stars.

Her dreams are glimpses, bewildered--celestial charts, oceanic swells, massive, moving bodies of water, the heavens as heavenly liquid, familiar whirlpools, the universe as a ship lost at sea--but the ship she imagines arrived safely, years ago, loaded with their possessions. — Danielle Dutton

For dinner Jade microwaves some Stars-n-Flags. They're addictive. They put sugar in the sauce and sugar in the meat nuggets. I think also caffeine. Someone told me the brown streaks in the Flags are caffeine. We have like five bowls each.
After dinner the babies get fussy and Min puts a mush of ice cream and Hershey's syrup in their bottles and we watch The Worst That Could Happen, a half hour computer simulation of tragedies that have never actually occurred but theoretically could. A kid gets hit by a train and flies into a zoo, where he's eaten by wolves. A man cuts his hand off chopping wood and while he's wandering around screaming for help is picked up by a tornado and dropped on a preschool during recess and lands on a pregnant teacher. — George Saunders

On the hill there was a poor old tramp wandering about with his stick, in among the carriages. A mass of rags covered his shoulders, and a squashed beaver-hat, bent down into the shape of a bowl, concealed his face; but, when he took it off, he exposed, instead of eyelids, two yawning bloodstained holes. The flesh was tattered into scarlet strips; and fluid was trickling out, congealing into green crusts that reached down to his nose, with black nostrils that kept sniffing convulsively. — Gustave Flaubert

My brain begins to work stuff out, but then kinda half way through, it starts wandering off and it's like ahh, unicorns. — Dougie Poynter

Following the death of his wife, Sam Johnson wrote to the Reverend Mr. Thomas Warton, "I have ever since seemed to myself broken off from mankind; a kind of solitary wanderer in the wilds of life, without any certain direction, or fixed point of view: a gloomy gazer on a world to which I have little relation."
But my wife wasn't dead, merely absent. — Mordecai Richler

And then, amidst the joy that grips everyone, I meet your mysteriously mirthless gaze, wandering no one knows where, in some far-off kingdom, in some far-off land. What wouldn't I give for it not to be there, for it to be written on your face that you are pleased with your fate and need nothing from anyone — Boris Pasternak

Angels don't exist.
Flawless skin, perfect hair, flowing white robes, all topped off with an adorable set of fluffy pink wings. Yeah. If you see that wandering around, you've probably stumbled onto the set of a Victoria's Secret catalog shoot. Prepare to get your butt kicked by security. — Cecily White

I bailed out on social media for a while, and in short order I found I was able to sit down and read a book again. For the first time in a couple years I could read more than three pages without my brain wandering off into the ether. I drew a direct causal line between all this sort of ratta-tat-tat staccato stimulation that we get from the Internet and my growing inability to sit down and read anything that was longer than 500 words. But for me it came back because those synapses were already latent in my brain. — Ron Currie Jr.

A typical plague victim developed large, tumorlike buboes on the skin; they started the size of almonds and grew to the size of eggs. They were painful to the touch and brought on hideous deformities when they grew large. A bubo under the arm would force the arm to lurch uncontrollably out to the side; sited on the neck, it would force the head into a permanently cocked position. The buboes were frequently accompanied by dark blotches, known as God's tokens, an unmistakable sign that the sufferer had been touched by the angel of death. Accompanying these violent deformities, the victim often developed a hacking cough that brought up blood and developed into incessant vomiting. He gave off a disgusting stench, which seemed to leak from every part of his body - his saliva, breath, sweat, and excrement stank overpoweringly - and eventually he began to lose his mind, wandering around screaming and collapsing in pain. — Dan Jones

Suppose I was to tell you that it's just beauty that's calling me, the beauty of the far off and unknown, the mystery and spell which lures me, the need of freedom of great wide spaces, the joy of wandering on and on
in quest of the secret which is hidden over there
beyond the horizon? — Eugene O'Neill

I felt my attention wandering off. It generally does at the phrase mere child. — Elaine Dundy

So Henry found himself stepping off the bus three stops early and wandering over to the Panama Hotel, a place between worlds when he was a child, a place between times now that he was a grown man. — Jamie Ford

The best worship that we ever render to God is far from perfect. Our praises, how faint and feeble they are! Our prayers, how wandering, how wavering they are! When we get nearest to God, how far off we are! When we are most like Him, how greatly unlike Him we are! — Charles Spurgeon

I may distance myself from God from time to time, wandering off in the ignorance of my self-absorbed preoccupations and attitudes
But God is never far off. Never distant.
Never remote.
He is close enough to hear the raw, unbridled "fuck" in my silent prayer of anguish.
Close enough to feel the groaning angst and tension in my gut that oft threatens to rend me to pieces.
Close enough to hear my heart slam itself in abandon against the walls of this temple of skin in holy desperation; clutching at the veil that dulls and distorts my vision.
Close enough to catch me as I stumble in my blind and weary state yet again and again and again.
Yes, He is close. She is never far off. God is my faithful friend and traveling companion, though I see Him not yet with these orbs of flesh. — Mac MacKenzie

John (Grisham) was really helpful keeping me on track, not wandering off into subplots, making sure I didn't spill the beans too early, all kinds of nitty-gritty things that you've gotta have under control if you're going to write a good thriller. — Tony Vanderwarker

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for awhile is just bliss. — J.K. Rowling

If you refuse to entertain a baby cousin, the baby cousin may get bored and entertain itself by wandering off and falling down a well. If you refuse to entertain a pack of hyenas, they may become restless and entertain themselves by devouring you. — Lemony Snicket

It stops wandering about the world of sense and settles down in the world of intellect, and there it occupies itself, casting off falsehood and feeding the soul in what Plato calls 'the plain of truth,' using his method of division to distinguish the Forms, and to determine the essential nature of each thing, and to find the primary kinds, and weaving together by the intellect all that issues from these primary kinds, till it has traversed the whole intelligible world; then it resolves again the structure of that world into its parts, and comes back to its starting-point; and then, keeping quiet (for it is quiet in so far as it is present There) it busies itself no more, but contemplates, having arrived at unity. (Ennead I.3.4) — A.H. Armstrong

Maybe, when you hear the name "Beverly," you think of Beverly Hills
people wandering the streets with their heads shot off by money. — Denis Johnson

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig
and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a torn heart.
Something from far off: it seemed
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.
Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig
sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance
climbed up through my conscious mind
as if suddenly the roots I had left behind
cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood - -
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent. — Pablo Neruda

He had a bright, reckless tenor that was always wandering off, looking for notes in the wrong places. — Patrick Rothfuss

After dinner the babies get fussy and Min puts a mush of ice cream and Hershey's syrup in their bottles and we watch The Worst That Could Happen, a half-hour of computer simulations of tragedies that have never actually occurred but theoretically could. A kid gets hit by a train and flies into a zoo, where he's eaten by wolves. A man cuts his hand off chopping wood and while wandering around screaming for help is picked up by a tornado and dropped on a preschool during recess and lands on a pregnant teacher. ("Sea Oak") — George Saunders

I know that we are surrounded by so much blossoming horror in the world that three puppies wandering off isn't very much, but I worry about it and see this simple event as the possible telescope for a larger agony. — Richard Brautigan

[...} What did I tell you about wandering off? Why don't you ever do anything I say? If I didn't know any better, I would swear that you feel a compulsion to disobey authoriy figures."

"That can't be what it is," she said.

"Well, that's what it seems like."

"But I don't view you as an authority figure."

"Oh, not this again. — Derek Landy

I turn off my cell and drive to the most anonymous place I could think of: Walmart. You'd be surprised at how much time you can spend wandering through the aisles looking at Corelle dinnerware with lemon and lime patterns and comparing the prices of generic vitamins to brand names. I fill up a car with things I do not need; dishtowel, a camping lantern and a bedazzler. Three Jim Carey DVDs packaged together for ten dollars, crest white strips. Then I abandon the cart somewhere in the fishing and hunting section and unfold a lawn chair. I sit down and try to read the latest People. — Jodi Picoult

What do you get when you cross an egomaniacal fairy godmother, an arrogant genie, and a couple of wandering plagiarists whose idea of cultural preservation is stealing the stories of unsuspecting villagers and passing them off as their own? — Kate SeRine

Maybe that's the thing with liberation. It comes with a price. Forty years wandering through the desert. Or incurring the wrath of two very pissed-off parents. — Gayle Forman

So, here we are, all of us poor bewildered darlings, wandering adrift in a universe too big and too complex for us, clasping and ricochetting off other people too different and too perplexing for us, and seeking to satisfy myriad, shifting, vague needs and desires, both mean and exalted. And sometimes we mesh. Don't we?
- Attributed to James Flynn, Ph.D. — Carl R. Rogers

Thinking can be lateral or "sweaty". For the latter you're better off in an office and following a routine but for the former you have to be "out of your mind", so to speak. So although I recognize the merits of hard work, I find that my work goes stale if I don't go off wandering around the world every few weeks. My friends think I'm a gipsy, but that's when I do "part 1" of my best work. — Joao Magueijo