Bryan

“But then there were other days, days when I would, quite unexpectedly, meet someone who saw the past not as a burden but as a forgotten story, now due to be retold; there were days when I would find an old house, or old church, or something unexpected like the cemetery in L’viv, which suddenly revealed the secret history of a place or a nation. That was part of what I was looking for: evidence that things of beauty had survived war, communism, and Russification; proof that difference and variety can outlast an imposed homogeneity; testimony, in fact, that people can survive any attempt to uproot them.”
― Anne Applebaum, Between East and West: Across the Borderlands of Europe

“If travel expands our experience and broadens our minds, the anticipation of travel helpfully narrows our reading list.”
― Thomas Swick, The Joys of Travel: And Stories That Illuminate Them

“I always tell travel writing students to use these early hours to explore, because one’s surroundings—the colorful drinks, the melodic sirens, the sweet-and-foul smells—will not be as clear or as sharp in a few days. At the start, everything stands out as if in high definition, especially, strangely, if you’re groggy from jet lag or insomnia.”
― Thomas Swick, The Joys of Travel: And Stories That Illuminate Them

“The space monkey continues, "Our culture has made us all the same. No one is truly white or black or rich, anymore. We all want the same. Individually, we are nothing.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club