Homeless

The twenty-four-hour diner, the station waiting room and the motel are sanctuaries for those who have, for noble reasons, failed to find a home in the ordinary world...

-Alain De Botton, The Art of Travel, 51.

Wherever You Go...

A momentous but until then overlooked fact was making itself apparent: I had inadvertently brought myself with me to the island.

-Alain De Botton, The Art of Travel, 19.

So Much for Feng Shui

We are sad at home and blame the weather and the ugliness of the buildings, but on the tropical island we learn (after an argument in a raffia bungalow under an azure sky) that the state of the skies and the appearance of our dwellings can never on their own either underwrite our joy or condemn us to misery.

-Alain De Botton, The Art of Travel, 25.

Suddenly Five Years Old

I can’t think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. Suddenly you are five years old again. You can’t read anything, you have only the most rudimentary sense of how things work, you can’t even reliably cross a street without endangering your life. Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses.

-Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There, 36.

Long-Range Planning

In long-range planning for a trip, I think there is a private conviction that it won’t happen.

-John Steinbeck, Travels with Charlie, 777.