Travel Quotes Quotes

I knew I could always earn money from a job. What I didn’t know was could I extend the dream of writing beyond my trip?

~ Gina Greenlee

Putting the dream in motion involved significant personal downsizing, moving three times to trim housing expenses and continuing to freelance. I sold one piece to The New York Times Magazine, many more to The Courant, and another to The St. Petersburg Times.

~ Gina Greenlee

Ten years ago I wondered, “How does one travel around the world? How does one step out of a well-established life to follow the dream?” I’ve answered those questions. But now new ones emerge.

~ Gina Greenlee

In the aftermath of the attacks on the United States – that included chaotic overall of airline security – and the exploding tensions in Nepal, friends thought it ill-advised for me to board a flight to Kathmandu. Yet my existence at home felt so tenuous and unpredictable that political unrest in Asia barely registered. Also, it seemed more important than ever for me to keep going, not only overseas but also in the direction of a more satisfying life. Somehow the two felt connected.

~ Gina Greenlee

The trip changed all that. Stirring the murk of a life ill-fitting, Something More was perceptible though without name or form. Something More was the genesis of a map, not one handed to me but rendered with each step taken, a skill seasoned by a cruise gone bad.

~ Gina Greenlee

In 2006 I had begun the discernment process for locating my rightful geographic home. By the time my corporate pink slip arrived I had spent two years researching and taking recon trips to five different cities in southern California. Having crossed them off my list, in February 2008 I visited Sarasota, Florida, at the urging of a friend who winters in a neighboring town. Though Florida had never been on my radar, only minutes in Sarasota I knew I’d found home.

~ Gina Greenlee

The cruise was the conduit for what would become my third book. While I was traveling and writing for ctnow.com, women across the United States and from the Caribbean emailed not to ask about my geographic journey but my existential one. “How do you find the courage to travel on your own?” they wondered. “How do you keep from getting lonely? Don’t you feel self-conscious eating out alone?” After the first 30 emails like these I thought, There’s a book here. It would be eight years before I published Postcards and Pearls: Life Lessons from Solo Moments on the Road. But the inspiration for publication came during the cruise.

~ Gina Greenlee

My post-cruise sabbatical would spark the idea for my first book, Cheaper Than Therapy: How to Keep Life’s Small Problems from Becoming Big Ones – The Lesson of the Paper Clips. How? In my data entry job all I did for 20 hours a week was paper clip printouts of computer screens. For three years. I loved it.

~ Gina Greenlee

Wandering is not limited to geography. Also an altered state of consciousness, it allows a disembodied self to drift on currents of collective awareness with minimal attachment to the physical world. This state of wander tapped imaginative faculties that opened me to a freedom of being only previously experienced through travel.

~ Gina Greenlee

During those days of whirling about the globe, I had an epiphany: travel was the only area of my life where I had no expectations. I anticipated nothing while fully engaging each moment. What bred adventure, surprise and deep experience was not knowing, surrendering to now and letting go of control.

~ Gina Greenlee

Then I’d go home, return to a pattern of worry, unable to tap the surrender core to travel’s inspiration. What was different?

~ Gina Greenlee

What would happen if, once back home, I stayed open to possibilities rather than attach to specific outcomes? What if I dreaded no potential storms? Ruminated over no past transgression? I knew how. For decades the reflex kicked in with each plane ride. The more I pondered these questions – How could I cultivate the habit of taking life as it comes? How can I immerse myself in living, like I’m on vacation on all the time, without boarding a plane or crossing a border? – the more I recognized the arbitrariness of the dichotomy between life and travel.

~ Gina Greenlee

Once back home I would adjust my lens to the resolution through which I perceived the people and provinces of the globe. My daily commute, the supermarket check out line, neighborhood walks, pedestrian tasks of any job would inspire me as much as the stir of white linen canopies in Venice’s Piazza San Marco; the velvety dunes of the eastern Sahara; Bali’s kaleidoscope of color; my Vietnamese sisters.

~ Gina Greenlee

The answer is neither job, nor paycheck; it is authentic, holistic work born from states of awareness and being. Through the coalescence of joy, wonder, enthusiasm, appreciation, experimentation, perpetual curiosity, exploring new avenues, welcoming surprise and wandering, I have begun the next leg of my journey; I have brought the spirit of the traveler home.

~ Gina Greenlee

In these pages, traveling “solo” does not necessarily mean “alone.” The absence of other people often suggests regretful isolation. “Solo” by contrast, is a willful decision to be the architect of our own experience.

~ Gina Greenlee

The gift of solo moments is that they are wholly ours. On or off the road, solo moments connect us inward to ourselves with heightened clarity and insight. They also direct our energies out into the world, magnetizing us to new people and experiences we may not have encountered under any other circumstance.

~ Gina Greenlee

I travel for the great stories now ready tell, and those waiting to be told.

~ Carew Papritz

Foolish acts and bold adventures almost always appear, especially in the beginning, to be the absolute same thing.

~ Leigh Ann Henion

Why travel? To be changed, and to be changed again and again.

~ Carew Papritz

Sometimes I travel just to be overwhelmed – for it’s good every now and then to be overwhelmed.

~ Carew Papritz

I travel for the jolting, angelic act of seeking strangeness and newness and profoundness.

~ Carew Papritz

For me, exploration was a personal venture. I did not go to the Arabian desert to collect plants nor to make a map; such things were incidental. At heart I knew that to write or even to talk of my travels was to tarnish the achievement. I went there to find peace in the hardship of desert travel and the company of desert peoples. I set myself a goal on these journeys, and, although the goal itself was unimportant, its attainment had to be worth every effort and sacrifice... No, it is not the goal but the way there that matters, and the harder the way the more worth while the journey.

~ Wilfred Thesiger

...That's the difference between backpackers and holiday makers. The former can't help but invite hassle whilst the latter pay to escape it.

~ Harry Whitewolf

When you focus on the journey, you will be blessed with guardian angels to direct your path.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

When you follow the right steps you will never get lost.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

When you travel, buy a historical book about the place, read to increase your knowledge on the beautiful places of the world.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I am enduring temporary sufferings to fulfill my dearest dreams.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

History is rich knowledge. In your travel, learn brief history of the place visited.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

History is rich knowledge, In your travel, learn the brief history of the place visited. .

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

In your travel, learn the brief history of the place visited. History is rich knowledge.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

A difficult journey is spiritual rewarding.There is a more dependence on God, His supernatural power, grace and divine favour long the travel.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Travel opens us up, exposes us to new people and places. New thoughts, new ways of being and a larger feeling of connection. And, the best part is, that it makes us appreciate our home that much more.

~ Erin Kouvas

You will only know the road, until you have travel on it.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

I am of course lost in this journey I'm on, but I do remain confident, though I am lost it will be a great adventure, this adventure will surpass my wildest imagination. so call me a fool, but I'm happy to be lost.

~ Micheline Jean Louis

I don't know where I am going, I just know I had to leave. Everything I was I carry with me, everything I will be lies waiting on the road ahead.

~ Ma Jian

Call it walking meditation or a neighborhood stroll; by whatever namesuits you, rediscover the art of meandering.

~ Gina Greenlee

When you travel, appreciate the culture of the people in the land.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

Wherever you travel to, appreciate the culture and beauty of the place.

~ Lailah Gifty Akita

It's through traveling you make the great journey into yourself, and it's the clarity of extremes in traveling that forces you to meet yourself like you've never met yourself before.

~ Carew Papritz

Life lessons are not journeys traveled in straight lines but are crossroadsformed years and miles apart.

~ Gina Greenlee