Quotes About Exploration

That which is terror by night is curiosity by day.

La montagne, la mer, la forêt, font des hommes sauvages. Elles développent le côté farouche, mais souvent sans détruire le côté humain.

Where the telescope ends, the microscope begins. Which of the two possesses the larger field of vision? Choose. A bit of mould is a pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an ant-hill of stars.

You can be anything you want. But you have to take a risk sometimes. Reach out.

Inside was a library unlike any Leni had ever seen. Row upon row of wooden desks, decorated with green banker's lamps, were positioned beneath an arched ceiling. Gothic chandeliers hung above the desks. And the books! She'd never seen so many. They whispered to her of unexplored worlds and unmet friends and she realized that she wasn't alone in this new world. Her friends were here, spine out, waiting for her as they always had.

Fear was a mansion, one room after another, connected by endless hallways.

Inside was a library unlike any Leni had ever seen. Row upon row of wooden desks, decorated with green banker's lamps, were positioned beneath an arched ceiling. Gothic chandeliers hung above the desks. And the books! She'd never seen so many. They whispered to her of unexplored worlds and unmet friends and she realized that she wasn't alone in this new world. Her friends were here, spine out, waiting for her as they always had.

I went in search of my mother's life, and found my own.

But for now, I am an explorer again, made bold by hardship and strengthened by loss, going west in search of something that exists only in my imagination. A life different than one I've known before.

It's a dangerous business … going out of your door. You step into the Road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to." —J. R. R. Tolkien

Like all motherless girls, Leni would become an emotional explorer, trying to uncover the lost part of her, the mother who had carried and nurtured and loved her. Leni would become both mother and child; through her, Mama would still grow and age. She would never be gone, not as long as Leni remembered her.

If I'm finally taking a trip into the unknown; there ought to be photographs to document this momentous event.

Mama was engaged in a continual quest to "find" herself. In the past few years, she'd tried EST and the human potential movement, spiritual training, Unitarianism. Even Buddhism. She'd cycled through them all, cherry-picked pieces and bits. Mostly, Leni thought, Mama had come away with T-shirts and sayings. Things like, What is, is, and what isn't, isn't. None of it seemed to amount to much.

Your mama told me that if a girl grows up smelling sea air, she can never really breathe inland.

Sixty miles north of Los Angeles.

There had to be opportunities out there, but where would she find them? The library. Books held the answer to every question.

Maybe under the bridge at Deception Pass.

For all he knew, he was the first person to climb this jutting, dangerous slab of rock. That was what he loved about this sport. When you were high above the world, anchored to a bit of stone by a piece of metal and your own courage, there was no outside world. No worries, no stresses, no memories of what you'd lost. There was only the extreme beauty, the solitude, and the risk. He loved that most of all: the risk. There was nothing like imminent danger to make a man know he was alive.

So they would try again in a new place, hoping geography would be the answer.

had never been

Now she knew there were a hundred ways to be lost and even more ways to be found

FEAR, LENI LEARNED, was not the small, dark closet she'd always imagined: walls pressed in close, a ceiling you bumped your head on, a floor cold to the touch. No. Fear was a mansion, one room after another, connected by endless hallways.

Libraries are very magical places.

I suppose, but that's not what I meant. I meant that in a way, I'm like Dorothée, aren't I? I'm on a great adventure, and one day, I'll find my way home.