Quotes About Adventure

Emphasizing the honky-tonk and the wickedness, I sounded disapproving, but I was happy. This was life to me, and I was joyous on those seedy streets, pretty women in doorways snatching at me. I was a thrill-seeking traveler, looking for something sensational to write about, but I did not look very deeply.

The whole point of adventure is that it is unplanned; a leap in the dark, verging on the unfortunate, offering glimpses of danger; and what separates adventure from disaster is that you live to tell the tale.

the conceit of the long-distance traveler is the belief that he is going so far, he will be alone—inconceivable that another person has the same good idea.

was happiest finding my own way and did not require a liaison man. It had been my intention to stay on the train, without bothering about arriving anywhere; sightseeing

It is fatal to know too much at the outset. Boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is over certain of his plot.

In a routine that served me for the next few weeks, I wandered around the busy, seemingly safe part of the city.

I had done enough traveling to know that half of travel was delay or nuisance

But I was not looking for repose or tranquility. This weekend was an aberration. It is pleasant in Mexico to sit by the beach, inert and sunlit, sipping a mojito, but who wants to hear about that? What you crave in reading a travel narrative is the unexpected, a taste of fear, the sudden emergence by the roadside of a wicked policeman, threatening harm.

I decided to hike up to Cerro Potosí, the hill above the town, beyond Tangamanga Park. The guidebook recommended good shoes, water, and long pants against the agave lechuguilla—thorny agave. I started on a cool morning, setting out on the trail

Travel had to do with movement and truth, with trying everything, offering yourself to experience and then reporting it.

Nothing fully prepares you for the strangeness of the border experience.

made notes on my progress through the mountains, which had thrilled me.

That's a road. You can take it. Go that way. My bus is too big, but your car can do it.

Paul Theroux

Reasoning that I would rather take a detour for hours on a bad road than sit in my car in a traffic jam, I thanked him and drove away, past the parked cars and the children and the protesting teachers, through the bowl of a green valley and into the hills that looked rockier and drier in the distance.

the journey is the goal.

I was traveling south in sunshine, euphoric again, on the open road.

every trip is unique.

Pimsa," Héctor said, passing the industrial park. "What's that?

Australian inland taipan is the most poisonous snake on earth—its bite will kill you in seconds. But none of this ought seriously to deter anyone from confronting the outback on foot, or even on all fours.

from San Luis Potosí, and at Santa María del Río, where the good road ended

I stopped simply to look around, in the idle curiosity that is available to any person with a car in Mexico and no particular place to go.

I found my berth and discovered that no one else was going to Xian. The sleeper was empty. This was the rarest situation on a Chinese train, and one to be relished. Such circumstances were almost luxurious and definitely cozy.

Tourists don't know where they've been. Travelers don't know where they're going.