Jan Morris Quotes

Quotes about:

• Wherever you go in life, you will feel somewhere over your shoulder a pink, castellated shimmering presence, the domes and riggings and crooked pinacles of the Serenissima

  Jan Morris

  Venice, Over You, Domes

  1960 Venice.

  50 Copy quote

• To me gender is not physical at all, but is altogether insubstantial. It is soul, perhaps, it is talent, it is taste, it is environment, it is how one feels, it is light and shade, it is inner music.

  Jan Morris

  Light, Soul, Shade

  Jan Morris (2011). “Conundrum”, p.26, Faber & Faber

  17 Copy quote

• Worldwide travel is not compulsory. Great minds have been fostered entirely by staying close to home. Moses never got further than the Promised Land. Da Vinci and Beethoven never left Europe. Shakespeare hardly went anywhere at all-certainly not to Elsinore or the coast of Bohemia.

  Jan Morris

  Home, Land, Europe

  11 Copy quote

• Book lovers will understand me, and they will know too that part of the pleasure of a library lies in its very existence.

  Jan Morris

  Lying, Book, Library

  Jan Morris (1989). “Pleasures of a tangled life”, Vintage

  17 Copy quote

• I’ve become obsessed with the idea of reconciliation, particularly reconciliation with nature but with people too, of course. I think that travel has been a kind of search for that, a pursuit for unity and even an attempt to contribute to a sense of unity.

  Jan Morris

  Thinking, Ideas, People

  11 Copy quote

• Travel, which was once either a necessity or an adventure, has become very largely a commodity, and from all sides we are persuaded into thinking that it is a social requirement, too.

  Jan Morris

  Travel, Adventure, Thinking

  16 Copy quote

• Venice is a cheek-by-jowl, back-of-the-hand, under-the-counter, higgledy-piggledy, anecdotal city, and she is rich in piquant wrinkled things, like an assortment of bric-a-brac in the house of a wayward connoisseur, or parasites on an oyster-shell.

  Jan Morris

  Hands, Oysters, Cities

  Jan Morris (2008). “Venice”, p.167, Faber & Faber

  16 Copy quote

• I had reached the conclusion myself that sex was not a division but a continuum, that almost nobody was altogether of one sex or another, and that the infinite subtlety of the shading from one extreme to the other was one of the most beautiful of nature's phenomena.

  Jan Morris

  Beautiful, Sex, Justice

  4 Copy quote

• I resist the idea that travel writing has got to be factual.

  Jan Morris

  Writing, Ideas, Factual

  5 Copy quote

• There are only two rules. One is E. M. Forster's guide to Alexandria; the best way to know Alexandria is to wander aimlessly. The second is from the Psalms; grin like a dog and run about through the city.

  Jan Morris

  Running, Dog, Travel

  63 Copy quote

• if there is one place in the United States where private styles make up for public images, it is San Francisco, where all lapsed lovers of America, even loyalists like me experiencing spasms of disillusionment, should be taken for refresher courses. The tides of all-American conformity beat vainly against the San Franciscan rock.

  Jan Morris

  Taken, Rocks, San Francisco

  9 Copy quote

• I half cherish the hope that the end of history will be Swissness.

  Jan Morris

  Half, Cherish, Ends

  Jan Morris (2010). “Europe: An Intimate Journey”, p.180, Faber & Faber

  5 Copy quote

• the personality of St. John's, Newfoundland, hits you like a smack in the face with a dried cod, enthusiastically administered by its citizenry.

  Jan Morris

  Personality, Canada, Faces

  Jan Morris (2011). “A Writer's World”, p.525, Faber & Faber

  12 Copy quote

• I believe the transsexual urge, at least as I have experienced it, to be far more than a social compulsion, but biological, imaginative, and essentially spiritual, too.

  Jan Morris

  Spiritual, Believe, Sexuality

  12 Copy quote

• The more I was treated as a woman, the more woman I became. A adapted willy-nilly. If I was assumed to be incompetent at reversing cars, or opening bottles, oddly incompetent I found myself becoming. If a case was thought too heavy for me, inexplicably I found it so myself.

  Jan Morris

  Car, Bottles, Becoming

  Jan Morris (2011). “Conundrum”, p.166, Faber & Faber

  4 Copy quote

• Movement was the essence of Manhattan. It had always been so, and now its sense of flow, energy, openness, elasticity as Charles Dickens had called it, was headier than ever. Half the city’s skill and aspirations seemed to go into the propagation of motion.

  Jan Morris

  Essence, Skills, Cities

  12 Copy quote

• Dublin ... is not only the capital of a nation, but the capital of an idea. The idea of Irishness is not universally beloved. Some people mock it, some hate it, some fear it. On the whole, though, I think it fair to say, the world interprets it chiefly as a particular kind of happiness, a happiness sometimes boozy and violent, but essentially innocent: and this ineradicable spirit of merriment informs the Dublin genius to this day.

  Jan Morris

  Hate, Thinking, Ideas

  Jan Morris (1976). “Travels”, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P

  14 Copy quote

• [Travel seems] not just a way of having a good time, but something that every self-respecting citizen ought to undertake, like a high-fiber diet, say, or a deodorant.

  Jan Morris

  Self, Citizens, Deodorant

  7 Copy quote

• Buildings are seldom just buildings in downtown Chicago, they are Examples, and not a city on Earth, I swear, is as knowledgeably preoccupied with architectural meaning. Where else would a department store include in its advertisements the name of the architect who created it, or a newspaper property section throw in a scholarly exposition of theoretical design?

  Jan Morris

  Cities, Names, Design

  Jan Morris (1993). “Locations”, Oxford University Press, USA

  8 Copy quote

• If I was an aspirant litterateur, I was also an aspirant anarchist. I have disliked Authority always, though sometimes seduced by its resplendence.

  Jan Morris

  Sometimes, Anarchist, Authority

  2003 A Writer's World: Travels1950-2000, prologue.

  4 Copy quote

• The genius of Canada remains essentially a deflationary genius.

  Jan Morris

  Genius, Canada, Remains

  1976 'On the Confederation Special,' in Travels.

  9 Copy quote

• Kashmir has always been more than a mere place. It has the quality of an experience, or a state of mind, or perhaps an ideal.

  Jan Morris

  Mind, Quality, Kashmir

  Jan Morris (2011). “A Writer's World”, p.279, Faber & Faber

  343 Copy quote

• Basque is one of the world's more alarming languages. Only a handful of adult foreigners, they say, have ever managed to learn it. The Devil tried once and mastered only three words - profanities, I assume.

  Jan Morris

  Devil, Adults, Three

  9 Copy quote

• Chicago's downtown seems to me to constitute, all in all, the best-looking twentieth-century city, the city where contemporary technique has best been matched by artistry, intelligence, and comparatively moderated greed. No doubt about it, if style were the one gauge, Chicago would be among the greatest of all the cities of the world.

  Jan Morris

  Cities, Greed, Doubt

  Jan Morris (1993). “Locations”, Oxford University Press, USA

  8 Copy quote

• Was there ever a name more full of purpose than Chicago's? ... spoken as Chicagoans themselves speak it, with a bit of a spit to give heft to its slither, it is gloriously onomatopoetic.

  Jan Morris

  Cities, Names, Giving

  Jan Morris (1993). “Locations”, Oxford University Press, USA

  6 Copy quote

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