where_no_woman | On the drabble fest again

What better way to celebrate our adventurous women than with a selection of quotations about travel? These are all the quotes I wrote for inspiration on the inside covers of my very first travel journal, and I hope they are equally inspiring for you. As always, take them in whatever way interests you - not every story you write has to be about travel.

The rules are probably quite familiar by now, but here they are anyway:

1) Prompts are not exclusive. There is no limit on the number of people who may write about a prompt, and there is no need to claim prompts.

2) Post responses in the comments and include the lead character and your prompt in the subject line. If you choose a long prompt, you may use just the first few words.

3) Responses may be any length from a proper 100-word drabble to a multi-chapter epic. If the story is too long for comments, you may post it elsewhere and comment with the link.

4) There is no time limit for this challenge. I will return to index the responses in a week or so.

5) Please leave feedback, respond to feedback, and pimp this post around.

6) If your response is rated NC-17 or would require a content warning (for rape, graphic violence, etc.), you may post it in the comments here but you must include the relevant rating or warning in the subject line.

ETA: Responses indexed as of 10/18/09

1. If we don't offer ourselves to the unknown, our senses dull. Our world becomes small and we lose our sense of wonder. Our eyes don't lift to the horizon, our ears don't hear the sounds around us...we pass our days in a routine that is both comfortable and limiting. We wake up one day and find that we have lost our dreams in order to protect our days.
--Kent Nerburn
Yeoman Rand by

venomlaced
Winona by

agirlnamedskip

2. Strange travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.
--Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

3. Of course world travel isn't as good as it seems, it's only after you've come back from all the heat and horror that you forget to get bugged and remember all the weird scenes you saw.
--Jack Kerouac
Number One by

helividia_p

4. I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be.
--Douglas Adams
Gaila by

rubynye

5. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did.
--Mark Twain
Winona by

yeomanrand
Valeris (ST VI: The Undiscovered Country) by

merisunshine36

6. There isn't a train I wouldn't take, no matter where it's going.
--Edna St. Vincent Millay

7. It's a dangerous business Frodo, going out your door. You step out onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.
--J.R.R. Tolkien

8. Is there anything as horrible as starting on a trip? Once you're off, that's all right, but the last moments are earthquake and convulsion, and the feeling that you are a snail being pulled off your rock.
--Charles Lindbergh

9. I saved every cent and then suddenly I blew it all on a big glorious trip to Europe or anywhere...
--Jack Kerouac

10. For myself, indeed, I know now that I have traveled so much because travel has enabled me to arrive at new, unknown places within my own clouded self.
--Lauren Van Der Post

11. You lose sight of things....and when you travel, everything balances out.
--Daranna Gidel

12. Eat dessert first, Life is uncertain
--Anonymous

13. The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality.
--Samuel Johnson
Ziyal, DS9 by

riviyan_questa

14. Your true traveler finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty-his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.
--Aldous Huxley

15. The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
--Marcel Proust

16. I am going away...to an unknown country where I shall have no past and no name, and where I shall be born again with a new face and an untried heart.
--Sidonie Gabrielle
Romulan Commander from TOS by

helvidia_p
Gaila by

possibly_thrice
Winona by

ninhursag

17. I have found out that there ain't no surer way to find out whether you like people or hate them than to travel with them.
--Mark Twain

18. . . .the grand tour is just the inspired man's way of heading home.
--Paul Theroux

19. I travel a lot; I hate having my life disrupted by routine.
--Caskie Stinnett

20. We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment.
--Hilaire Belloc

21. Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.
--Jack Kerouac

22. A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.
--John Steinbeck

23. All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.
--Martin Buber

24. It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.
--Paul Theroux
Number One by

boosette

25. The Germans have a word to describe the chronic affliction many of us suffer from, that insistent urge to be somewhere out there and not here: "Fernweh". It's the opposite of being homesick; instead, it's a pining to be not-home, to be away, way away, because that's where you feel at home.
--Joe Robinson
Winona by

framlingem

26. I realized I had a choice: I could stay...and gorge myself on all that lay piled on my plate, or I could leave hungry with the desire to return.
--Victoria Abbot Ricardi

27. When you see someone putting their big boots on, you know it's time for an adventure.
--Winnie the Pooh

28. All those shining stars in the firmament you have touched with the intention of holding, you now find your grasp releasing and they are gone, existing only in your memory -- and theirs.
--Jan Haag

29. Many of the most terrifying moments of my life never happened.
--Jan Haag
Ezri Dax (DS9) by

jncar
Saavik in the Reboot-verse by

saavikam77

30. Go alone. Go alone. Go alone.
--Jan Haag

(All the Jan Haag ones are from this article about traveling alone if anyone is curious)

On the drabble fest again

Re: 25. Fernweh (Winona)