“
You discover how confounding the world is when you try to draw it. You look at a car, and you try to see its car-ness, and you’re like an immigrant to your own world. You don’t have to travel to encounter weirdness. You wake up to it.
”
”
Shaun Tan
“
But it's daylight," she said at last. "Vampires can't go out in the sun, everyone knows that!"
Bones chuckled. "Right And we shrink back from crosses, can't travel over water, and always get staked in the end by the righteous slayer. Really, who'd be afraid of a creature like that? All you'd need is a Bible, a tanning bed, and some holy water to send us shivering to our dooms.
”
”
Jeaniene Frost (Magic Graves (Night Huntress, #4.5; Kate Daniels, #0.5))
“
The world goes by, the young and the hopeful, all head for their future. Where does that leave us? There is a misconception that we have reached our destinations the moment we grow old, but it is not a well-accepted fact that we are still travelling towards those destinations, still beyond our reach even on the day we close our eyes for the final time.
”
”
Tan Twan Eng (The Gift of Rain)
“
I, not anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel if by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere—on water and land.
”
”
Amy Tan (The Valley of Amazement)
“
He was stunning,incredible,unlike anything she had ever seen before.Around her,the crowd noise dissipated to a dull hum,but she barely noticed.Her gaze was slowly traveling the length of him,taking in his predatory stance and powerful muscle and tanned skin.
”
”
Laura Wright (Raphael/Parish (Bayou Heat, #1-2))
“
Keep your life simple and stylish and earnest. Do good and donate your time and money to something you care about. Make people laugh. Be frank. Always give people a second chance—but rarely a third. Live light, travel light, and be light. Forget shit and move on. Make everyone you love feel loved. Waste not, want not. Reuse stuff. Stop trying to get a tan and straighten your hair—you’re just not made that way. Go to the movies, go to the library, go to the park. Try to make every day feel as close to a vacation as possible. Floss.
”
”
Judy Greer (I Don't Know What You Know Me From: My Life as a Co-Star)
“
Y por que el sol es tan mal amigo
del caminante en el desierto?
Y por que el sol es tan simpatico
en el jardin del hospital?
And why is the sun such a bad companion
to the traveler in the desert?
And why is the sun so congenial
in the hospital garden?
”
”
Pablo Neruda
“
Hate me then, for I would rather have your hatred than indifference.” His eyes were the shade of wintry rivers, glints of light traveling in their depths. “The past can’t be undone, but my hope lies in our future. Trust me with your heart again and you will find the truth of mine. For you are the reason I rise each day, for you I live and breathe.
”
”
Sue Lynn Tan (Heart of the Sun Warrior (The Celestial Kingdom Duology, #2))
“
I have lived, I have traveled the world, and now, like a worn-out clock, my life is winding down, the hands slowing, stepping out of the flow of time. If one steps out of time what does one have? Why, the past of course, gradually being worn away by the years as a pebble halted on a riverbed is eroded by the passage of water.
”
”
Tan Twan Eng
“
Yes, I could say that I had lived my life, if not to the full then at least almost to the brim. What more could one ask? Rare is the person whose life overflows. I have lived, I have travelled the world, and now, like a worn out clock, my life is winding down, the hands slowing, stepping out of the flow of time. If one steps out of time what does one have?
”
”
Tan Twan Eng (The Gift of Rain)
“
I feel that when I travel I can change myself a little, and I return from a journey not quite the same self I was.
”
”
Tan Twan Eng (The House of Doors)
“
We're your guardians until my uncle tracks down your cousin and arrests him."
Tammy's face was almost comical in its incredulity. "But it's daylight," she said at last. "Vampires can't go out in the sun, everyone knows that!"
Bones chuckled. "Right. And we shrink back from crosses, can't travel over water, can't enter a home unless invited, and always get staked in the end by the righteous slayer. Really, who'd be afraid of a creature like that? All you'd need is a Bible, a tanning bed, and some holy water to send us shivering to our dooms.
”
”
Jeaniene Frost (One For the Money (Night Huntress, #4.5))
“
[...] la sensación de que las cosas no marchan bien y de que, de hecho, todo funciona tan mal que lo único que podemos hacer es decir: 'Jódete', una y otra vez, sin parar, gritándolo a pleno pulmón, hasta que alguien nos detenga.
”
”
Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler’s Wife)
“
When you are quite well enough to travel, Latimer, I shall take you home with me. The journey will amuse you and do you good, for I shall go through the Tyrol and Austria, and you will see many new places. Our neighbours, the Filmores, are come; Alfred will join us at Basle, and we shall all go together to Vienna, and back by Prague...'
My father was called away before he had finished his sentence, and he left my mind resting on the word Prague with a strange sense that a new and wondrous scene was breaking upon me: a city under the broad sunshine, that seemed to me as if it were summer sunshine of a long-past century arrested in its course-unrefreshed for ages by dews of night, or the rushing rain-cloud; scorching the dusty, weary, time-eaten grandeur of a people doomed to live on in the stale repetition of memories, like deposed and superannuated kings in their regal gold inwoven tatters. The city looked so thirsty that the broad river seemed to me a sheet of metal; and the blackened statues, as I passed under their blank gaze, along the unending bridge, with their ancient garments and their saintly crowns, seemed to me the real inhabitants and owners of this place, while the busy, trivial men and women, hurrying to and fro, were a swarm of ephemeral visitants infesting it for a day. It is such grim, stony beings as these, I thought, who are the fathers of ancient faded children, in those tanned time-fretted dwellings that crowd the steep before me; who pay their court in the worn and crumbling pomp of the palace which stretches its monotonous length on the height; who worship wearily in the stifling air of the churches, urged by no fear or hope, but compelled by their doom to be ever old and undying, to live on in the rigidity of habit, as they live on in perpetual midday, without the repose of night or the new birth of morning.
A stunning clang of metal suddenly thrilled through me, and I became conscious of the objects in my room again: one of the fire-irons had fallen as Pierre opened the door to bring me my draught. My heart was palpitating violently, and I begged Pierre to leave my draught beside me; I would take it presently. ("The Lifted Veil")
”
”
George Eliot (The Lifted Veil (Fantasy and Horror Classics))
“
Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel it by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere—on water and land.
”
”
Amy Tan (The Valley of Amazement)
“
Todo lo que tengo lo llevo conmigo.
O: todo lo mío lo llevo conmigo.
He llevado todo lo que tenía. No era mío. Era o algo destinado a otras finalidades o de otra persona. […]
Llevo un equipaje de silencio. Me he rodeado de un silencio tan hondo y duradero que nunca acierto a abrirme con las palabras. Cuando hablo, solamente me cierro de otra manera.
”
”
Herta Müller (The Hunger Angel)
“
Sí, el mundo enseña humildad. Pues regresé de aquel viaje con el sentimiento de vergüenza por mi falta de conocimientos, por la insuficiencia de mis lecturas, por mi ignorancia. Aprendí que una cultura distinta no nos desvelaría sus secretos tan sólo porque así se lo ordenásemos y que antes de encontrarnos con ella era necesario pasar por una larga y sólida preparación".
”
”
Ryszard Kapuściński (Travels with Herodotus)
“
I turned to the familiar page in Leaves of Grass, and I read aloud in a steady voice. “Not I, not anyone else can travel that road for you. You must travel if by yourself. It is not far. It is within reach. Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know. Perhaps it is everywhere—on water and land.
”
”
Amy Tan (The Valley of Amazement)
“
The gnarled pine, I would have said, touch it. This is China. Horticulturalists around the world have come to study it. Yet no one has ever been able to explain why it grows like a corkscrew, just as no one can adequately explain China. But like that tree, there it is, old, resilient, and oddly magnificent. Within that tree are the elements in nature that have inspired Chinese artists for centuries: gesture over geometry, subtlety over symmetry, constant flow over static form.
And the temples, walk and touch them. This is China. Don't merely stare at these murals and statues. Fly up to the crossbeams, get down on your hands and knees, and press your head to the floor tiles. Hide behind that pillar and come eye to eye with its flecks of paint. Imagine that you are the interior decorator who is a thousand years in age. Start with a bit of Tibetan Buddhism, plus a dash each of animism and Taoism. A hodgepodge, you say? No, what is in those temples is an amalgam that is pure Chinese, a lovely shabby elegance, a glorious new motley that makes China infinitely intriguing. Nothing is ever completely thrown away and replaced. If one period of influence falls out of favor, it is patched over. The old views still exist, one chipped layer beneath, ready to pop through with the slightest abrasion.
That is the Chinese aesthetic and also its spirit. Those are the traces that have affected all who have traveled along China's roads.
”
”
Amy Tan (Saving Fish from Drowning)
“
It was in that kitchen where I waited for Daddy and Mrs. Masicotte to be finished with the weekly business, two rooms away. Though Mrs. Masicotte seemed as indifferent to me as her renters were, she provided richly for me while I waited. On hand were plates of bakery cookies, thick picture books with shiny pages, punch-out paper dolls. My companion during these vigils was Zahra, Mrs. Masicotte’s fat tan cocker spaniel, who sat at my feet and watched, unblinking, as cookies traveled mercilessly from the plate to my mouth. Mrs. Masicotte and my father laughed and talked loud during their meetings and sometimes played the radio. (Our radio at home was a plastic box; Mrs. Masicotte’s was a piece of furniture.) “Are we going soon?” I’d ask Daddy whenever he came out to the kitchen to check on me or get them another pair of Rheingolds. “A few minutes,” was what he always said, no matter how much longer they were going to be. I wanted my father to be at home laughing with Ma on Saturday afternoons, instead of with Mrs. Masicotte, who had yellowy white hair and a fat little body like Zahra’s. My father called Mrs. Masicotte by her first name, LuAnn; Ma called her, simply, “her.” “It’s her,” she’d tell Daddy whenever the telephone interrupted our dinner. Sometimes, when the meetings dragged on unreasonably or when they laughed too loud in there, I sat and dared myself to do naughty things, then did them. One time I scribbled on all the faces in the expensive storybooks. Another Saturday I waterlogged a sponge and threw it at Zahra’s face. Regularly, I tantalized the dog with the cookies I made sure stayed just out of her reach. My actions—each of which invited my father’s anger—shocked and pleased me.
”
”
Wally Lamb (She's Come Undone)
“
At last they came to the lower slopes of the great mountains. Here she met a wild and bedraggled boy. He stumbled across her when she had stopped to rest and suckle the baby. The boy stared at the unlikely pair for a moment, then seated himself on the ground at a respectful distance, obviously preparing to converse. He was the strangest looking boy she had ever seen. Evidently a changeling like herself, for he was tall and straight with long slender limbs, but his hair was golden like the sun and his eyes a deep blue like the sky. He looked to be about fifteen years old, not quite a man, yet man enough to survive. She guessed he must have originated from the fabled district of Shor, in the far south, where it was rumoured that all the people were changelings, and all golden-haired.
Astelle tensed, fully expecting Torking to deliver one of his pain bolts to the curious boy, but the child seemed unperturbed, and simply carried on suckling. This boy's attention was obviously not deemed as a threat. She relaxed and smiled at the youth.
He returned the smile, white teeth startling against his tanned and dirty face. ‘Why are you travelling all alone?’ he asked.
Encouraged by Torking's mindwhispers, Astelle managed to concoct a story very close to the truth.
‘As you can see, my child is rather unusual,’ she explained. ‘I could not bear to raise him among mortals who would constantly deride and insult him – and his father has left me, so I had no choice but to run from my tribe.’
Sympathy appeared in the deep blue eyes. ‘I understand that very well,’ he said. ‘I am an escaped slave. I was captured in infancy, and have no memory of my own people, but all my life I have been mocked and abused because I am different. My name is Bren. I would like to travel with you, if you don't mind. I could take care of you both.’
‘Keep him,’ Torking mindwhispered. ‘He will be useful to fish and hunt for us. But do not tell him that I speak to you.’
Astelle smiled. ‘Thank you Bren,’ she said. ‘I will be glad of your company. I am called Astelle.’
‘A Faen name...’ he said wonderingly.
They began to climb the mountains of Clor.
”
”
Bernie Morris (The Fury of the Fae)
“
These are a traveler’s snakes,” Conall countered. “But even on a larger scale, they’re different.” He smirked at Galen’s expression of mingled disgust and fear. “How do I know I can trust you?” he asked again. He let out a sigh. “My girls talked to you.”
Galen searched his face. “Let’s just say I have a vested interested. One that’s very close to me. And another who might be?” he asked hesitantly, and Conall raised his eyebrows.
“You’re very forward. More than I’m used to.”
“More than you’re used to?” Galen laughed. “Says the man who covers himself in gold powder, then stands on a stage wearing nothing but shorts leaving very little to the imagination, and three snakes?”
Conall squirmed in his chair. “When you put it like that… That’s my outside personality— my stage persona. The one Henry calls The Incredible Constrictor. I hate it, but once he’s stuck on something, it’s very hard to shake him. I could have strangled him. You’d think I was the one doing the constricting.”
“Do you?” Galen asked with a half smile. Conall blushed, his tan hiding some of it, but not all.
“Only when encouraged,” he finally muttered back, and Galen laughed.
”
”
Wendy Clements (Heart in a Bottle)
“
The birds had multiplied. She'd installed rows upon rows of floating melamine shelves above shoulder height to accommodate the expression of her once humble collection. Though she'd had bird figurines all over the apartment, the bulk of her prized collection was confined to her bedroom because it had given her joy to wake up to them every morning. Before I'd left, I had a tradition of gifting her with bird figurines. It began with a storm petrel, a Wakamba carving of ebony wood from Kenya I had picked up at the museum gift shop from a sixth-grade school field trip. She'd adored the unexpected birthday present, and I had hunted for them since.
Clusters of ceramic birds were perched on every shelf. Her obsession had brought her happiness, so I'd fed it. The tiki bird from French Polynesia nested beside a delft bluebird from the Netherlands. One of my favorites was a glass rainbow macaw from an Argentinian artist that mimicked the vibrant barrios of Buenos Aires. Since the sixth grade, I'd given her one every year until I'd left: eight birds in total.
As I lifted each member of her extensive bird collection, I imagined Ma-ma was with me, telling a story about each one. There were no signs of dust anywhere; cleanliness had been her religion. I counted eighty-eight birds in total. Ma-ma had been busy collecting while I was gone.
I couldn't deny that every time I saw a beautiful feathered creature in figurine form, I thought of my mother. If only I'd sent her one, even a single bird, from my travels, it could have been the precursor to establishing communication once more.
Ma-ma had spoken to her birds often, especially when she cleaned them every Saturday morning. I had imagined she was some fairy-tale princess in the Black Forest holding court over an avian kingdom.
I was tempted to speak to them now, but I didn't want to be the one to convey the loss of their queen.
Suddenly, however, Ma-ma's collection stirred.
It began as a single chirp, a mournful cry swelling into a chorus. The figurines burst into song, tiny beaks opening, chests puffed, to release a somber tribute to their departed beloved. The tune was unfamiliar, yet its melancholy was palpable, rising, surging until the final trill when every bird bowed their heads toward the empty bed, frozen as if they hadn't sung seconds before.
I thanked them for the happiness they'd bestowed on Ma-ma.
”
”
Roselle Lim (Natalie Tan's Book of Luck & Fortune)
“
The scrotum of a buck, tanned with the hair on, makes a good tobacco-pouch.
”
”
Horace Kephart (The Book of Camping and Woodcraft: A Guidebook for Those who Travel in the Wilderness)
“
I felt old, and it was not a very pleasant feeling. The world goes by, the young and the hopeful, all head for their future. Where does that leave us? There is the misconception that we have reached our destinations the moment we grow old, but it is not a well-accepted fact that we are still traveling toward those destinations, still beyond our reach even on the day we close our eyes for the final time.
”
”
Tan Twan Eng (The Gift of Rain)
“
Derek Walcott wrote in his 1992 Nobel Lecture about the enthusiasm of the tourist: What is hidden cannot be loved. The traveller cannot love, since love is stasis and travel is motion. If he returns to what he loved in a landscape and stays there, he is no longer a traveller but in stasis and concentration, the lover of that particular part of earth, a native. So many people say they ‘love the Caribbean’, meaning that someday they plan to return for a visit but could never live there, the usual benign insult of the traveller, the tourist. These travellers, at their kindest, were devoted to the same patronage, the islands passing in profile, their vegetal luxury, their backwardness and poverty . . . What is the earthly paradise for our visitors? Two weeks without rain and a mahogany tan, and, at sunset, local troubadours in straw hats and floral shirts beating ‘Yellow Bird’ and ‘Banana Boat Song’ to death. There is a territory wider than this – wider than the limits made by the map of an island – which is the illimitable sea and what it remembers. All of the Antilles, every island, is an effort of memory; every mind, every racial biography culminating in amnesia and fog. Pieces of sunlight through the fog and sudden rainbows, arcs-en-ciel.24
”
”
Carrie Gibson (Empire's Crossroads: A History of the Caribbean from Columbus to the Present Day)
“
It is well known that the term ‘Pakistan’, an acronym, was originally thought up in England by a group of Muslim intellectuals. P for the Punjabis, A for the Afghans, K for the Kashmiris, S for Sind and the ‘tan’, they say, for Baluchistan. (No mention of the East Wing, you notice; Bangladesh never got its name in the tide, and so, eventually, it took the hint and seceded from the secessionists. Imagine what such a double secession does to people!) – So it was a word born in exile which then went East, was borne-across or translated, and imposed itself on history; a returning migrant, settling down on partitioned land, forming a palimpsest on the past. A palimpsest obscures what lies beneath. To build Pakistan it was necessary to cover up Indian history, to deny that Indian centuries lay just beneath the surface of Pakistani Standard Time. The past was rewritten; there was nothing else to be done.
Who commandeered the job of rewriting history? – The immigrants, the mohajirs. In what languages? – Urdu and English, both imported tongues, although one travelled less distance than the other. It is possible to see the subsequent history of Pakistan as a duel between two layers of time, the obscured world forcing its way back through what-had-been-imposed. It is the true desire of every artist to impose his or her vision on the world; and Pakistan, the peeling, fragmenting palimpsest, increasingly at war with itself, may be described as a failure of the dreaming mind. Perhaps the pigments used were the wrong ones, impermanent, like Leonardo’s; or perhaps the place was just insufficiently imagined, a picture full of irreconcilable elements, midriffbaring immigrant saris versus demure, indigenous Sindhi shalwar-kurtas, Urdu versus Punjabi, now versus then: a miracle that went wrong.
”
”
Salman Rushdie (Shame)
“
Growth often came from stepping out of one's comfort zone and embracing the unknown.
”
”
Amy Tan (Revisiting the Depths: Overcoming Fear and Finding Peace - A Journey of Transformation)
“
The world goes by, the young and the hopeful, all head for their future. Where does that leave us? There is the misconception that we have reached our destinations the moment we grow old, but it is not a well-accepted fact that we are still traveling toward those destinations, still beyond our reach even on the day we close our eyes for the final time.
”
”
Tan Twan Eng (The Gift of Rain)
“
A sunburnt tan means you’re well traveled, which means you’re rich.
”
”
David Gatewood (The Alien Chronicles)
“
My eyes fall on him and I pause. He stands up from the chair in front of my father’s desk. His eyes travel the length of me as mine bounce down his. He’s younger than I thought he’d be, probably not a day over thirty, and tall with short, ash brown hair, tanned skin, and a clear face — not a scratch on it meaning he’s either very new or very, very good at his job.
”
”
Tabatha Kiss (The Hitman's Dancer (Snake Eyes, #2))
“
Surely you don’t mean right now.” Her startled gaze focused on the lodge door. “It’s not even dark yet. People are still awake. You haven’t eaten. There’s no fire built. We can’t just--”
He lifted the door flap and drew her into the dark lodge. “Blue Eyes, I have no hunger for food,” he said huskily. “But I will make a fire if you wish for one.”
Any delay, no matter how short, appealed to Loretta. “Oh, yes, it’s sort of chilly, don’t you think?” It was a particularly muggy evening, the kind that made clothing stick to the skin, but that hardly seemed important. “Yes, a fire would be lovely.”
He left her standing alone in the shadows to haul in some wood, which he quickly arranged in the firepit. Moments later golden flames lit the room, the light dancing and flickering on the tan walls. Remaining crouched by the flames, he tipped his head back and gave her a lazy perusal, his eyes touching on her dress, eyebrows lifting in a silent question.
“Do you hunger for food?” he asked her softly.
Loretta clamped a hand to her waist. “You know, actually I am hungry. Famished! Aren’t you? What sounds good?” She threw a frantic look at the cooking pots behind him. “I’ll bet stew would strike your fancy, wouldn’t it? After traveling so far and eating nothing but jerked meat. Yes, stew would be just the thing.”
Hunter’s mouth quirked. “Blue Eyes, a stew will take a very long time.”
All night, if she was lucky. “Oh, not that long. It’s no trouble, really!” She made a wide circle around him toward the pots. “I make a wonderful stew, really I do. I’m sure Maiden has some roots and onions I can borrow. Just you--”
Loretta leaped at the touch of his hand on her shoulder. She turned to face him, a large pot wedged between them, her hand white-knuckled on the handle.
“Blue Eyes, I do not want stew,” Hunter whispered, his voice laced with tenderness. “If you hunger, we will have nuts and fruit, eh?”
Loretta swallowed a lump of air. Fruit and nuts were better than the alternative. Maybe, if she ate one nut at a time…“All right, fruit and nuts.”
He spread a buffalo robe beside the fire while she put the pot away and dug up a parfleche of fruit and nuts from his store of preserved edibles. Kneeling beside him, Loretta munched industriously, staring into the leaping flames, aware with every bite she took that Hunter watched her. When she reached for her fourth handful, he clamped his long fingers around her wrist.
“Enough,” he said evenly. “You will sicken your gut if you eat more.”
Loretta’s gut was already in sorry shape. She swallowed, trying to avoid his gaze and failing miserably. When their eyes met, she felt as if the ground fell away. There was no mistaking that look in his eye. The moment of reckoning had come.
”
”
Catherine Anderson (Comanche Moon (Comanche, #1))
“
You and I have the most interesting jobs in the universe: We run the Intergalactic Steam Circus, a most outrageous and bizarre affair. Traveling in wildly colorful space clippers, we sail from planet to planet in a huge parade, landing just outside the major population centers, setting up our magnificent and gaudy tents, and selling the people our magic of noise, confusion, bright lights, and trickery. There are, of course, beautiful young women strutting like cats in scanty sequined outfits, and handsome young men with tanned and muscular bodies, their shirts open to the waist. But that’s not what draws the crowds, day after day, planet after planet. They come to see the machinery.
”
”
Kenn Amdahl (There Are No Electrons: Electronics for Earthlings)
“
Whiteness, like herpes, lingers forever. If you travel across South Asia, for example, you'll look at all the ads promoting beauty products and ask yourself why everyone looks like a white person from New Jersey with a summer tan. In fact, beauty is still often measured by saaf rang, or clean skin color, which refers to "light skin tone." Fair & Lovely cream sells like hotcakes all around South Asia, even though everyone knows it's bullshit and doesn't help make you either "fair" or "lovely." You can never wipe off the brown no matter how hard you try, no matter how hard you pray, but, still, people aspire and hope maybe, one day, one bottle will contain a magical elixir that takes them to Whiteness.
”
”
Wajahat Ali (Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American)
“
The driver saw Reacher emerge. He hit a button to open the trunk, climbed out, and walked stiffly to the rear of the car. He’d be in his mid- to late fifties, Reacher thought, with silver hair buzzed short and the tanned, leathery skin of a guy who spent plenty of time outdoors. He wasn’t tall—maybe five-ten at most—and he was wearing pale chinos and a white shirt. The shirt was tight across his shoulders, and also around his gut. It was like he’d once been in shape but was struggling to stay that way and wasn’t ready to admit he might not make it. He looked at Reacher and sneered, making plain his displeasure at the prospect of someone so unkempt being allowed to travel in his pristine vehicle.
”
”
Lee Child (The Sentinel (Jack Reacher, #25))
“
Why are you here?” Bryce asked. He pushed his large wooden chair back slightly, turning toward her. Her gaze fell on the tanned chest that peeked out from an opening at the front of his loose shirt. Did the man ever wear a surcoat? Or armor for that matter? He dressed more like a peasant than a noble. She blinked. What was his question? “Your brother was ordered, as you say, to take and hold Bristol Manor, but why are you here?” Oh, that. “Toren refused to relent on the issue of my betrothal. I thought perhaps he would be more agreeable in person.” “And so you traveled to England, to an unsafe holding in the Borderlands, to convince him otherwise?” “We’re in Scotland, not England. Aye, it seemed to be the only way to convince him.” “Did it work?” “Not exactly.” Bryce’s blue eyes narrowed. “Not exactly?” “Not yet.” “How long have you been at Bristol?” “Three years.” The new lord of Bristol choked on his ale. “Three years? The man is likely married already by now.” “That hardly matters, does it, my lord? I can assure you leaving Bristol with my life has become more of a priority than getting married.
”
”
Cecelia Mecca (The Lord's Captive (Border, #2))
“
walk out to the middle of the road and look both ways, trying to determine in which direction town might be. To the left, nothing but dry fields. To the right, the same. No shade, no life. Just the blazing Kenyan sun in front, and behind me, at the hotel, a cruel pantomime of Africa played out in blackface, replete with rich, tanned Euro-travelers demanding afternoon cocktails from illiterate Kenyan waiters in bow ties and white jackets.
”
”
Kenneth Cain (Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone)
“
No abundan, sin embargo, naturalezas tan fervorosas. El hombre medio no muestra especial interés por el mundo. A él ha venido y en él se ve obligado a vivir, y no tiene más remedio que afrontar este hecho lo mejor que pueda y sepa; cuanto menos esfuerzo le exija, tanto mejor. Mientras que la absorbente empresa de conocer el mundo requiere un esfuerzo gigantesco y una dedicación absoluta. La mayoría de la gente tiende más bien a desarrollar habilidades contrarias: mirar para no ver y escuchar para no oír.
”
”
Ryszard Kapuściński (Travels with Herodotus)
“
Satoru había saludo de viaje aquel día. Yo le había dicho adiós. Y ahora Satoru estaba dentro de mí. No tenía por qué reafirmar algo tan natural en un funeral dirigido a los humanos.
-Nana
”
”
Hiro Arikawa (The Travelling Cat Chronicles)