"Blue Highways" Quotes

A journey, after all, neither begins in the instant we set out, nor ends when we have reached our door step once again. It starts much earlier and is really never over, because the film of memory continues running on inside of us long after we have come to a physical standstill. Indeed, there exists something like a contagion of travel, and the disease is essentially incurable.

What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.

Instead of insight, maybe all a man gets is strength to wander for a while.

A person who knows where the road goes is a person who knows where he wants to go. A person who knows where he wants to go is not a person who is lost.

The longest journey is the journey inward.

He knew that the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step, but he also knew that the journey of a thousand miles requires only one step.

Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home.

To move, to breathe, to fly, to float; to gain all while you give; to roam the roads of lands remote; to travel is to live.

Everything looks new, and even the old is unfamiliar.

I wondered if the highway was really just a beltway around the great nothingness that is America.