Quotes About Exploration

I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place !

it was all so new to her, he guessed.

That's what I love about reading: one tiny thing will interest you in a book, and that tiny thing will lead you onto another book, and another bit there will lead you onto a third book. It's geometrically progressive—all with no end in sight, and for no other reason than sheer enjoyment.

Books swept me away, this way and that, one after the other; I made endless vows according to their lights for I believed them.

I had been chipping at the world idly, and had by accident uncovered vast and labyrinthine further worlds within it.

I wake up thinking: What am I reading? What will I read next? I'm terrified that I'll run out, that I will read through all I want to, and be forced to learn wildflowers at last, to keep awake.

When you open a book," the sentimental library posters said, "anything can happen." This was so. A book of fiction was a bomb. It was a land mine you wanted to go off. You wanted it to blow your whole day. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of books were duds. They had been rusting out of everyone's way for so long that they no longer worked. There was no way to distinguish the duds from the live mines except to throw yourself at them headlong, one by one.

I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again

Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow?

Love so sprang at her, she honestly thought no one had ever looked into it. Where was it in literature? Someone would have written something. She must not have recognized it. Time to read everything again.

There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin.

The point of going somewhere like the Napo River in Ecuador is not to see the most spectacular anything. It is simply to see what is there.

If even rock was interesting, if even this ugliness was worth whole shelves at the library, required sophisticated tools to study, and inspired grown men to crack mountains and saw crystals--then what wasn't?

I set up and staged hundreds of ends-of-the-world and watched, enthralled, as they played themselves out.

I seem to be on a road, walking, greeting the hedgerows, the rose-hips, the apples and thorn. I seem to be on a road, walking, familiar with neighbors, high-handed with cattle, smelling the sea, and alone. Already, I know the names of things. I can kick a stone.

What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are not they both saying: Hello? We spy on whales and on interstellar radio objects; we starve ourselves and pray till we're blue.

I had hope for my rough edges. I wanted to use them as a can opener, to cut myself a hole in the world's surface, and exit through it.

We are here on the planet only once, and might as well get a feel for the place.

The secret of seeing is to sail on solar wind.

The scent of a faraway place lay on my skin.

And I kind of love it that you want to know everything.

I've always thought that science and fiction writing have a lot in common because they're both about modeling reality.

Yeah, well. They're more like 'Keep Out' signs, or 'Keep In,' I guess—as in keeping you guys in your place. The world goes on for a whole lot farther, trust me. This is just a trick to keep you from knowing it.

That's how things were out here in the wild, she was learning. Dangerous or beautiful. Or both.