Quotes & Sayings About Wanderlust

There is a whole generation of young people just like us wandering around Europe and the rest of the world, trying to find some meaning for why they are alive and what they should choose to do with their time. When Martha leaves and we sit in front of the fire in the living room, I look to Lily until she turns to me and I can see the grief that hides just under the surface of her expression. We are, or at least were, two of those lost souls: wanderers, backpackers, season workers, Wwoofers, Workawayers, travellers: searching the world for something or someplace to hold on to. And we have come home not because we have retired from trying to find answers and are ready to settle into adulthood, but because my death has come upon us fast and unexpected. I am not the first person of this generation of travellers- or any person who lives in this godless, superficial society- to die. But I think that it feels to Lily and to me, my mother too perhaps, that I may very well be. — Annie Fisher

Early railway journeys took him to Ceylon, Thailand, and Burma; he would later describe his wanderlust as the "peripatetics of a Jewish prince". — VO Blum

What I love is how seamless everything is. You walk throw a forest and come out in a village; and there's no difference, no division. You aren't in nature one minute and in civilization the next. The houses are made out of mud and stone and wood, drawn from the land around. Nothing stands out, nothing jars. — Jamie Zeppa

An ardent desire to go took possession of me once more. Not because I wanted to leave - I was quite all right on this Cretan coast, and felt happy and free there and I needed nothing - but because I have always been consumed with one desire; to touch and see as much as possible of the earth and the sea before I die. — Nikos Kazantzakis

The Wonderlust
probably it's a worse affliction than the Wanderlust. — Sinclair Lewis

I dont live in a fantasy; just a dream, that's to hard for some to believe. — Nikki Rowe

Travel is like adultery; one is always tempted to be unfaithful to one's own country. To have imagination is inevitably to be dissatisfied with where you live ... in our wanderlust, we are lovers looking for consummation. — Anatole Broyard

He said what nobody understood was, she always felt like a bird in a cage--she wanted to be without roots. — Kate Alcott

There's something about arriving in new cities, wandering empty streets with no destination. I will never lose the love for the arriving, but I'm born to leave. — Charlotte Eriksson

I love going out of my way, beyond what I know, and finding my way back a few extra miles, by another trail, with a compass that argues with the map ... nights alone in motels in remote western towns where I know no one and no one I know knows where I am, nights with strange paintings and floral spreads and cable television that furnish a reprieve from my own biography, when in Benjamin's terms, I have lost myself though I know where I am. Moments when I say to myself as feet or car clear a crest or round a bend, I have never seen this place before. Times when some architectural detail on vista that has escaped me these many years says to me that I never did know where I was, even when I was home. — Rebecca Solnit

Will I ever see the mountains or am I doomed to roam the flatlands? — Jessica-Lynn Barbour

Women have routinely been punished and intimidated for attempting that most simple of freedoms, taking a walk, because their walking and indeed their very beings have been construed as inevitably, continually sexual in those societies concerned with controlling women's sexuality. — Rebecca Solnit

While she was in transit, being unattached was exhilarating, but the moment she stopped, so did the high. — Whitney Otto

The beauty he saw in her was the beauty she forgot to see in herself and what a beautiful reminder, that love is what will see us all through. — Nikki Rowe

Rivers are the primal highways of life. From the crack of time, they had borne men's dreams, and in their lovely rush to elsewhere, fed our wanderlust, mimicked our arteries, and charmed our imaginations in a way the static pond or vast and savage ocean never could. — Tom Robbins

Everything looks different. The houses are all these wild colors. The light is strange. It smells primeval. You're on Mars."
"You are talking about driving?" Lin attempted to clarify.
"About wanderlust," she answered. — Nicole Mones

Rest stops have always made him strangely happy. He couldn't say why. Just the idea of everyone on their way somewhere, united by wanderlust, no one belonging more than anyone else. — Jonathan Tropper

You dervishes are as crazy as rats in a pantry. Especially you wandering types. All day long you fast and pray and walk under the scorching sun. No wonder you start hallucinating - your brain is fried! — Elif Shafak

You're not sorry to go, of course. With people like us our home is where we are not ... No one person in the world is necessary to you or to me. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Paradise was always over there, a day's sail away. But it's a funny thing, escapism. You can go far and wide and you can keep moving on and on through places and years, but you never escape your own life. I, finally, knew where my life belonged. Home. — J. Maarten Troost

Show me that horizon, promise me a world better than this on the other side of the sun. — Saim .A. Cheeda

There was a lust of wandering in his feet that burned to set out for the ends of the earth. On! On! his heart seemed to cry. Evening would deepen above the sea, night fall upon the plains, dawn glimmer before the wanderer and show him strange fields and hills and faces. Where? — James Joyce

One soft humid early spring morning driving a winding road across Mount Tamalpais, the 2,500-foot mountain just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, a bend reveals a sudden vision of San Francisco in shades of blue, a city in a dream, and I was filled with a tremendous yearning to live in that place of blue hills and blue buildings, though I do live there, I had just left there after breakfast. — Rebecca Solnit

Long-term interpersonal relationships are the crucible of genuine progress in the Christian life. People who stay also grow. People who leave do not grow. We all know people who are consumed with spiritual wanderlust. But we never get to know them very well because they cannot seem to stay put. They move along from church to church, ever searching for a congregation that will better satisfy their felt needs. Like trees repeatedly transplanted from soil to soil, these spiritual nomads fail to put down roots and seldom experience lasting and fruitful growth in their Christian lives. — Joseph H. Hellerman

I was on vacation with my family when I got the scripts for 'Wanderlust' and I was trying to work on the audition while I was on vacation. I remember a big gust of wind blew the entire script into the pool, so I had to dry it with a hairdryer. — Kathryn Hahn

Embrace all emotions: sadness, happiness, sorrow, hate, love, prejudice, fear; they are weapons against our greatest enemy: indifference. — Dave Matthes

Didn't know where I was going. Didn't care where I ended up. I knew I'd be okay though. — Darnell Lamont Walker

To lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. In Benjamin's terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery. — Rebecca Solnit

And
even if our hearts collided
Can I trust it to be
what I've always dreamed ...
No dear,
it'll be so much more. — Nikki Rowe

She is like a butterfly,
Beautiful to look at
But hard to catch. — Nikki Rowe

It was the inverse of an island in the sea. — Elisabeth Eaves

All I wanted was to live a life where I could be me, and be okay with that. I had no need for material possessions, money or even close friends with me on my journey. I never understood people very well anyway, and they never seemed to understand me very well either. All I wanted was my art and the chance to be the creator of my own world, my own reality. I wanted the open road and new beginnings every day. — Charlotte Eriksson

Would you that ever find yourself walking the Road, trudging without purpose, seeking some journey's end, I give you this warning. The Road is a living being. She is an enchantress and She has a long reach. — Caiseal Mor

Wanderlust is incurable. — Mark Jenkins

A map such as that one is worth many hundreds, and as luck will have it, thousands of dollars. But more than this, it is a remembrance of that time before our planet was so small. When this map was made, I thought, you could live without knowing where you were not living. — Jonathan Safran Foer

It was a place as blank as a sheet of paper. It was the place I had always been looking for... Flat expanses would call to me... These are the places where the desert is most itself: stark, open, free, an invitation to wander, a laboratory of perception, scale, light, a place where loneliness has a luxurious flavor... — Rebecca Solnit

I followed my wanderlust. It bruised me sometimes, and took me to all kinds of highs. Now that my thirst is slaked, I get to start anew. — Elisabeth Eaves

For Courtney's whole life, seeing the world had only been a dream, but now, as Adrian Diamond's daughter, it could be a reality. — Michelle Madow

The places we visited were always richer and always more intricate than one could imagine. I loved to find out about the world, the good and the bad, in this way. For me, observing things with my own eyes was the only way. My wanderlust was also a wonderlust. — Luke F.D. Marsden

It will no longer be necessary to leave one's own home in order to find work in the surrounding districts, which means spending week after week away from home, for no matter how restless a fellow might be, his own home, if he has a wife he respects and children he loves, has the same satisfying taste as bread, a man's home is not for all hours, but he soon begins to miss it if he does not go back there every day. — Jose Saramago

How you live your life is up to you. You have to go out and grab the world by the horns. Rope it before it ties you down and decides for you. — Sarah Reijonen

It might be well enough to wander if you've a place and people to come back to, but I tell you now there's no desolation like wanting to go home and truly not knowing where it is. — Elizabeth Kerner

I've seen marvelous things, Sunday. I've looked back from the edge of the system and seen this planet, this Earth, reduced to a tiny dot of pale blue. I know what that feels like. To think that dot is where we came from, where we evolved out of the chaos and the dirt. And I know what it feels like to imagine going further. To hold that incredible, dangerous thought in my mind, if only for an instant. To think: what if I don't go home? What if I just keep traveling? Watching that pale-blue dot fall ever further away, until the darkness swallowed it and there was no turning back. Until Earth was just a blue memory. — Alastair Reynolds

He found himself wondering at times, especially in the autumn, about the wild lands, and strange visions of mountains that he had never seen came into his dreams. — J.R.R. Tolkien

It's often been said, she's easy on the eye but the moment she shows you a slice of her personality, you'll feel for the first time, something of magic is walking on this earth. — Nikki Rowe

The Wanderlust has got me ... by the belly-aching fire — Robert W. Service

I may stay here in this town another day or I may go on to another town. No one knows where I am. I am taking this bath in life, as you see, and when I have had enough of it I shall go home feeling refreshed. — Sherwood Anderson

I'm sorry! I really am! I wanted to get out of this place! I want to live! I want to get away from here and never see it again! I hate everything about it!"
"You will hate the next place, too," I said. "What you are you will carry with you. — Louis L'Amour

I can only speak from my personal experience, but I've been married for ten years and barely any gay people have tried to break up my marriage. I say barely any because that Nate Berkus is a little shady. I am defenseless against his cuteness and eye for accessories. He is always convincing me to buy beautiful trinkets with our grocery money, and this drives your sweet father a bit nuts. So you might want to keep your eye on Berkus. But with the exception of him, I'm fairly certain that the only threats to your father's and my marriage are our pride, insecurity, anger, and wanderlust. Do not be afraid of people who seem different from you, baby. Different always turns out to be an illusion. Look hard. — Glennon Doyle Melton

There's always a parallel story. The paths not taken go on in our heads. — Elisabeth Eaves

I built my home in the feeling of waking up at dawn in a new city, where every road is the right road because there is no ordinary. Everything is as profound as you make it. — Charlotte Eriksson

And then 'Wanderlust,' Ken Marino and David Wain wrote the funniest - they're amazing. That was one of my most favorite creative experiences; we're all up at that commune, a small group of people. Everyone was funnier than the next. It was an amazing ensemble feeling. Everyone gave and took in the best way. — Kathryn Hahn

I would've given up without her - not on you, never on you, but on myself. I suppose I can tell you this now, but I wasn't a very good student. I wasn't smart enough to just get by. I wasn't focused enough in class. I rarely passed exams. I skipped assignments. I was constantly on academic probation. Not that your grandmother would ever know, but at the time, I was thinking of doing what you were later accused of doing: selling all my belongings, sticking out my thumb, and hitchhiking to California to be with the other hippies who had dropped out and tuned in.

Everything changed when I met your mother. She made me want things that I had never dreamed of wanting: a steady job, a reliable car, a mortgage, a family. You figured out a long time ago that you got your wanderlust from me. I want you to know that this is what happens when you meet the person you are supposed to spend the rest of your life with: That restless feeling dissolves like butter. — Karin Slaughter

To belong nowhere is a blessing and a curse, like any kind of freedom. — Leah Stewart

What if it's the there
and not the here
that I long for?
The wander
and not the wait,
the magic
in the lost feet
stumbling down
the faraway street
and the way the moon
never hangs
quite the same. — Tyler Knott Gregson

Alone in the car with my social life all before and behind me, I was suspended in the beautiful solitude of the open road, in a kind of introspection that only outdoor space generates, for inside and outside are more intertwined than the usual distinctions allow. The emotion stirred by the landscape is piercing, a joy close to pain when the blue is deepest on the horizon or the clouds are doing those spectacular fleeting things so much easier to recall than to describe. — Rebecca Solnit

Wanderlust is not unheard of in our kind; it comes upon us now and then. When you can live forever, staying in one place can come to seem a dull prison after many, many years. — Cassandra Clare

And you must not worry about me. You must follow your dreams. You have your life ahead of you. I am just a wanderer passing by. — Avijeet Das

I could give up, it's the easiest option
But what would I achieve?
Many sleepless nights holding regret
Of all I didn't seek,
That option will never exist to me;
My dreams are far too real,
Down the hard road I find
My place in the world; the closest
To home Ill ever feel. — Nikki Rowe

Lovecraft says he knows about tentacles
but that motherfucker never bedded a girl from
West Chester
and survived
She was a toothache
that one
and she tasted like crack
the best thing about her
was if I was ever hungry
I could always make a meal out of whatever
was making rest at the corners of her mouth
I can't remember her name
as is the case with most of them
then again I can't remember
how many donuts I ate this morning
or how many beers I'll drink tonight,
tomorrow — Dave Matthes

There came a day when the clouds drifting along with the wind aroused a wanderlust in me, and I set off on a journey to roam along the seashores — Matsuo Basho

There is an answer to this question, and for anyone who is well and truly afflicted with wanderlust, it is obvious. My favorite place is always the NEXT place--the place I haven't been yet. — Bob Krist

There was something much greater she needed to feed her soul, and perhaps one day soon she would go ... — Danielle Steel

After two stories, I blew out my light. The night was clear. My ceiling was the sky and an eyelash of the moon. By shifting from side to side, I made my hammock swing me into sleep. — Gail Carson Levine

i took a night drive.
i needed to get away.
i needed to know
it's okay to go
and have no destination,
where time moves slow
or doesn't exist.
that life can be like this,
aimless wandering,
just breathing,
living,
driving forever underneath the stars. — AVA.

Nostalgia in reverse, the longing for yet another strange land, grew especially strong in spring. — Vladimir Nabokov

You don't even know where I'm going."
"I don't care. I'd like to go anywhere. — John Steinbeck

He pointed out to him the bearings of the coast, explained to him the variations of the compass, and taught him to read in that vast book opened over our heads which they call heaven, and where God writes in azure with letters of diamonds. — Alexandre Dumas

I know it's not strictly sex that accounts for my straying the motive usually attributed to men. I think it's just too tempting to have two lives rather than one. Some people think that too much travel begets infidelity: Separation and opportunity test the bonds of love. I think it's more likely that people who hate to make choices to settle on one thing or another are attracted to travel. Travel doesn't beget a double life. The appeal of the double life begets travel. — Elisabeth Eaves

Austin - it's a stimulating center. In this conversation, the very first two questions were talking about my kind of wanderlust and my adventures. Some people at my time in life travel forever. I don't know whether it's the British or the Australians - whoever it is, you can kind of stagger into some sort of far-off bastion in the middle of nowhere, and you'll find someone from Britain or someone from Australia or maybe an American. — Robert Plant

I was lieing to myself when I thought I was lost, I have never been lost - I just wasn't ready to be found. — Nikki Rowe

I want to see everything now. And while none of it will be me when it goes in, after a while it'll all gather together inside and it'll be me. Look at the world out there, my God, my God, look at it out there, outside me, out there beyond my face and the only way to really touch it is to put it where it's finally me, where it's in the blood, where it pumps around a thousand times ten thousand a day. I'll get hold of it so it'll never run off. I'll hold onto the world so tight some day. I've got a finger on it now; that's a beginning. — Ray Bradbury

... a certain kind of wanderlust can only be assuaged by the acts of the body itself in motion, not the motion of the car, boat, or plane. — Rebecca Solnit

Wanderlust. These are words that I associate with him now. Not genius. Not gifted. Extraordinary in any way. — Abigail George

It sounds so far away and different. I like different places. I like any places that isn't here. — Edna Ferber

Don't know. Don't care. I'm hopping on a bus and going until I can't go any farther. Until I find a place that feels like home.'
He's quiet for a long time. 'How will you know what home feels like?'
It hangs in the air between us, as frozen as our breaths. I don't have an answer. — Holly Black

Wanderlust, the very strong or irresistible impulse to travel, is adopted untouched from the German, presumably because it couldn't be improved upon. Workarounds like the French passion du voyage don't quite capture the same meaning. Wanderlust is not a passion for travel exactly; it's something more animal and more fickle - something more like lust. We don't lust after many things in life. We don't need words like worklust or homemakinglust. — Elisabeth Eaves

I'm not a woman you bring home to Mother, pick out china patterns with, or Mary forefend, breed. I've seen a chunk of the universe, true, but there's still so much more to see. I doubt I'll ever cure this wanderlust, and I'm content with dedicating my life to failing to sate it ... He's never going to sit at my feet and write me poems, which is good because I hate poetry, except dirty ones that rhyme. — Ann Aguirre

That's the place to get to - nowhere. One wants to wander away from the world's somewheres, into our own nowhere. — D.H. Lawrence

The trees called to me, urging me to abandon what I knew and vanish into the oncoming night. It was a desire that had been tugging me with disconcerting frequency these days. — Maggie Stiefvater

We are all pilgrims who seek Italy. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Every once in a while, in newspapers, magazines, and biographical dictionaries, I run upon sketches of my life, wherein, delicately phrased, I learn that it was in order to study sociology that I became a tramp. This is very nice and thoughtful of the biographers, but it is inaccurate. I became a tramp - well, because of the life that was in me, of the wanderlust in my blood that would not let me rest. Sociology was merely incidental; it came afterward, in the same manner that a wet skin follows a ducking. I went on "The Road" because I couldn't keep away from it; because I hadn't the price of the railroad fare in my jeans; because I was so made that I couldn't work all my life on "one same shift"; because - well, just because it was easier to than not to. — Jack London

He was suffering from wanderlust, complicated by the tension of knowing that he was rooted to this town by something as simple as his name. — Jodi Picoult

The old wanderlust had gotten into his blood, the joy of the unbound life, the joy of seeking, of hoping without limit. — Upton Sinclair

He's sick." "What with?" "Sitzenlust. Chronic. The opposite of wanderlust. — Rex Stout

After my book Wanderlust came out in 2000, I found myself better able to resist being bullied out of my own perceptions and interpretations. On two occasions around that time, I objected to the behavior of a man, only to be told that the incidents hadn't happened at all as I said, that I was subjective, delusional, overwrought, dishonest- in a nutshell, female. — Rebecca Solnit

What would describe it? What word in the English language would speak of youth and hope and freedom and desire, of sweet wanderlust and burning blood? What word describes the brotherhood of buddies, and the feeling that as long as the music plays, you are part of that tough, rambling breed who will inherit the earth? — Robert McCammon

But wanderlust is like a pretty girl - you wake up one morning, find she's grown old and decide that either you're going to commit your life or you're going to walk away. — Charlie LeDuff

The geographical pilgrimage is the symbolic acting out an inner journey. The inner journey is the interpolation of the meanings and signs of the outer pilgrimage. One can have one without the other. It is best to have both. — Thomas Merton

I don't want to learn in a classroom anymore. I want to travel and talk to people and learn that way. I want to learn as I go,gathering knowledge and not being rigorously tested on it. I don't want to lose passion in the things I like because of the worry of exams. I want to be fuelled by snippets of knowledge I gain from people and be inquisitive. School has stolen my passion for the things I'm interested in and I hate it for that. — Anonymous

The desire to go home that is a desire to be whole, to know where you are, to be the point of intersection of all the lines drawn through all the stars, to be the constellation-maker and the center of the world, that center called love. To awaken from sleep, to rest from awakening, to tame the animal, to let the soul go wild, to shelter in darkness and blaze with light, to cease to speak and be perfectly understood. — Rebecca Solnit

Consulting maps can diminish the wanderlust that they awaken,as the act of looking at them can replace the act of travel. But looking at maps is much more than an act of aesthetic replacement. Anyone who opens an atlas wants everything at once, without limits
the whole world. This longing will always be great, far greater than any satisfaction to be had by attaining what is desired. Give me an atlas over a guidebook any day. There is no more poetic book in the world. — Judith Schalansky

I want to turn my life into sad adventure and myths. — J. Limbu

Delay and dirt are the realities of the most rewarding travel. — Paul Theroux

You may not believe it, but it is what I desire the most in the world. This place has afflicted me with a terrible wanderlust. I long for the fire, for the sights you have seen. Yet here I am, two hundred years after I arrived. Still a prisoner, though I masquerade as a king. — Samantha Shannon

Ryogoku Kokugikan* Ryogoku, the largest sumo stadium in Japan with a capacity of 10,000 spectators, holds grand tournaments of basho in January, May and September. These magnificent 15-day long tournaments are filled with ceremonies and rituals that are as interesting as the wrestling matches themselves. The competition begins around 9am each day, with amateur matches, and progress in order of seniority as the day continues. — Wanderlust Pocket Guides

Even if he was happier in Asia than he'd been in Latin America, the wanderlust still worked on my father's insides like a disease. One of the most recurrent memories of my childhood is of him sitting in his armchair in the evenings, poring over atlases the way other fathers read newspapers or books. — Scott Anderson

Wanderlust consumed her; foreign hearts and exotic minds compelled her. She had a gypsy soul and a vibrant hope for the unknown. — Unknown

I am tired of safe places, and roofs, and walls around me. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Drifting across the vast space, silent except for wind and footsteps, I felt uncluttered and unhurried for the first time in a while, already on desert time. — Rebecca Solnit