Colin Fletcher Quotes

• Mostly, two miles an hour is good going.

  Colin Fletcher

  Journey, Two, Hiking

  47 Copy quote

• Every walk of life falls under the Testicular Imperative: Either you have the world by them, or it has you.

  Colin Fletcher

  Fall, World, Walks

  Colin Fletcher, Chip Rawlins (2015). “The Complete Walker IV”, p.74, Knopf

  29 Copy quote

• There there is nothing like a wilderness journey for rekindling the fires of life. Simplicity is part of it. Cutting the cackle. Transportation reduced to leg - or arm - power, eating irons to one spoon. Such simplicity, together with sweat and silence, amplify the rhythms of any long journey, especially through unknown, untattered territory. And in the end such a journey can restore an understanding of how insignificant you are -- and thereby set you free.

  Colin Fletcher

  Cutting, Journey, Iron

  Colin Fletcher (1997). “River: One Man's Journey Down the Colorado, Source to Sea”, Knopf

  18 Copy quote

• I find that the three truly great times for thinking thoughts are when I am standing in the shower, sitting on the john, or walking. And the greatest of these, by far, is walking.

  Colin Fletcher

  Thinking, Three, Sitting

  Colin Fletcher, Chip Rawlins (2015). “The Complete Walker IV”, p.1224, Knopf

  15 Copy quote

• Frankly, I fail to see how going for a six-month, thousand-mile walk through deserts and mountains can be judged less real than spending six months working eight hours a day, five days a week, in order to earn enough money to be able to come back to a comfortable home in the evening and sit in front of a TV screen and watch the two-dimensional image of some guy talking about a book he has written on a six-month, thousand-mile walk through deserts and mountains.

  Colin Fletcher

  Real, Book, Home

  Colin Fletcher, Clem L. Rawlins (2002). “The Complete Walker IV”, Alfred a Knopf Incorporated

  17 Copy quote

• Details of the many walks I made along the crest have blurred, now, into a pleasing tapestry of grass and space and sunlight.

  Colin Fletcher

  Journey, Hiking, Space

  Colin Fletcher (2014). “The Secret Worlds of Colin Fletcher”, p.105, Vintage

  18 Copy quote

• I had better admit right away that walking can in the end become an addiction ... even in this final stage it remains a delectable madness, very good for sanity, and I recommend it with passion.

  Colin Fletcher

  Passion, Addiction, Finals

  Colin Fletcher, Chip Rawlins (2015). “The Complete Walker IV”, p.15, Knopf

  7 Copy quote

• The best dress for walking is nakedness. But our sad though fascinating world rarely offers the right and necessary combinations of weather and privacy, and even when it does the Utopia never seems to last very long.

  Colin Fletcher

  Weather, Long, Dresses

  7 Copy quote

• I do what I do instinctively, and that’s me. If you like me, that’s fine; if you don’t like me then don’t watch me.

  Colin Fletcher

  Watches, Don't Like Me, Fine

  28 Copy quote

• Life should be an unfinished business.

  Colin Fletcher

  Unfinished Business, Should, Unfinished

  Colin Fletcher (1997). “River: One Man's Journey Down the Colorado, Source to Sea”, Knopf

  7 Copy quote

• Under most conditions, the best roof for your bedroom is the sky. This commonsense arrangement saves weight, time, energy, and money.

  Colin Fletcher

  Sky, Energy, Weight

  7 Copy quote

• The best dress for walking is nakedness.

  Colin Fletcher

  Dresses, Nudists, Walking

  Colin Fletcher, Chip Rawlins (2015). “The Complete Walker IV”, p.754, Knopf

  41 Copy quote

• Although the vast majority of walkers never even think of using a walking staff, I unhesitatingly include it among the foundations of the house that travels on my back.

  Colin Fletcher

  Journey, Thinking, Hiking

  Colin Fletcher, Chip Rawlins (2015). “The Complete Walker IV”, p.146, Knopf

  12 Copy quote

• Now, nakedness is a delightful condition. And it keeps you very pleasantly cool - especially, I suppose, if you happen to be a man. But as I walked on eastward that afternoon through my private, segregated, Tonto world (exercising due care at first for previously protected sectors of my anatomy) I found I had gained more than coolness. I felt a quite unexpected freedom from restraint. And after a while I found that I had moved on to a new kind of simplicity. A simplicity that had a fitting, Adam-like, in-the-beginning earliness about it.

  Colin Fletcher

  Exercise, Men, Simplicity

  Colin Fletcher (1972). “The Man who Walked Through Time”, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

• By walking naked you gain far more than coolness. You feel an unexpected sense of freedom from restraint. An uplifting and almost delirious sense of simplicity. In this new simplicity you soon find that you have become, in a new and surer sense, and integral part of the simple, complex world you are walking through. And then you are really walking.

  Colin Fletcher

  Uplifting, Simple, Simplicity

  Colin Fletcher, Chip Rawlins (2015). “The Complete Walker IV”, p.849, Knopf

  11 Copy quote

• It is always there, of course, when you come back from the green world. You have been living by sunrise and sunset, by wind and rain, surrounded by the ebb and flow of lives that respond only to such simple, rhythmic elements. But now the tone and tempo of the days switch. Instead of harmony, jangle.

  Colin Fletcher

  Rain, Sunset, Simple

  Colin Fletcher (1973). “The Winds of Mara”, Alfred A. Knopf

  6 Copy quote

• God is light, we are told, and Hell is outer darkness. But look at a desert mountain stripped bare by the sun, and you learn only geography. Watch darkness claim it, and for a moment you may grasp why God had to create Satan—or man to create both.

  Colin Fletcher

  Men, Light, Darkness

  6 Copy quote

• People will assign irrational importance to almost anything in quotes on top of a pleasant image

  Colin Fletcher

  People, Importance, Irrational

  7 Copy quote

• Even in these mercifully emancipated decades, many people still seem quite seriously alarmed at the prospect of sleeping away from officially consecrated campsites, with no more equipment than they can carry on their backs. When pressed, they babble about snakes or bears or even, by God, bandits. But the real barrier, I'm sure, is the unknown.

  Colin Fletcher

  Real, Sleep, Snakes

  9 Copy quote

• Freed from the pressure of haste, the tyranny of film, and now the restraint of clothes, I found myself looking more closely at what went on around me.

  Colin Fletcher

  Clothes, Haste, Pressure

  Colin Fletcher (1972). “The Man who Walked Through Time”, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

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