“The paradox of love is that to have it is to want to preserve it because it’s perfect in the moment but that preservation is impossible because the perfection is only ever an instant passed through. Love like travel is a series of moments that we immediately leave behind. Still we try to hold on and embalm against all evidence and common sense proclaiming our promises and plans. The more I loved him the more I felt hope. But hope acknowledges uncertainty and so I also felt my first premonitions of loss.”

“To travel hopefully is better than to have arrived.”

“Writing is an affair of yearning for great voyages and hauling on frayed ropes.”

“Fare well we call to hearth and hallThough wind may blow and rain may fallWe must away ere break of dayOver the wood and mountain tallTo Rivendell where Elves yet dwellIn glades beneath the misty fellThrough moor and waste we ride in hasteAnd wither then we cannot tellWith foes ahead behind us dreadBeneath the sky shall be our bedUntil at last our toil be spedOur journey done, our errand spedWe must away! We must away!We ride before the break of day!”

“I’ve come to realize that sometimes, what you love most is what you have to fight the hardest to keep.”

“ i had a dream when i was 22 that someday i would go to the region of ice and snow and go on and on till i came to one of the poles of the earth”

“Bad, or good, as it happens to be, that is what it is to exist! . . . It is as though I have been silent and fuddled with sleep all my life. In spite of all, I know now that at least it is better to go always towards the summer, towards those burning seas of light; to sit at night in the forecastle lost in an unfamiliar dream, when the spirit becomes filled with stars, instead of wounds, and good and compassionate and tender. To sail into an unknown spring, or receive one’s baptism on storm’s promontory, where the solitary albatross heels over in the gale, and at last come to land. To know the earth under one’s foot and go, in wild delight, ways where there is water.”

“With the need for the self in the time of another / I left my seaport grim and dear / knowing good work could be made / in the state governed by both Hope and Despair.”

“Roam abroad in the world, and take thy fill of its enjoyments before the day shall come when thou must quit it for good.”

“La strada non presaDue strade divergevano in un bosco d’autunnoe dispiaciuto di non poterle percorrere entrambe,essendo un solo viaggiatore, a lungo indugiaifissandone una, più lontano che potevofin dove si perdeva tra i cespugli.Poi presi l’altra, che era buona ugualmentee aveva forse l’aspetto miglioreperché era erbosa e meno calpestatasebbene il passaggio le avesse rese quasi uguali.Ed entrambe quella mattina erano ricoperte di foglieche nessun passo aveva anneritooh, mi riservai la prima per un altro giornoanche se, sapendo che una strada conduce verso un’altra,dubitavo che sarei mai tornato indietro.Lo racconterò con un sospiroda qualche parte tra molti anni:due strade divergevano in un bosco ed io -io presi la meno battuta,e questo ha fatto tutta la differenza.”

“Those who know nothing of foreign languages know nothing of their own.”

“I drift like a cloud,Across these venerable eastern lands,A journey of unfathomable distances,An endless scroll of experiences…Lady Zhejiang here we must part,For the next province awaits my embrace.Sad wanderer, once you conquer the East,Where do you go?”

“People wonder why so many writers come to live in Paris. I’ve been living ten years in Paris and the answer seems simple to me: because it’s the best place to pick ideas. Just like Italy, Spain.. or Iran are the best places to pick saffron. If you want to pick opium poppies you go to Burma or South-East Asia. And if you want to pick novel ideas, you go to Paris.”

“So I find words I never thought to speakIn streets I never thought I should revisitWhen I left my body on a distant shore.”

“We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.”