Foreign Places Quotes

• Once again she would arrive at a foreign place. Once again be the newcomer, an outsider, the one who did not belong. She knew from experience that she would quickly have to ingratiate herself with her new masters to avoid being rejected or, in more dire cases, punished. Then there would be the phase where she would have to sharpen her senses in order to see and hear as acutely as possible so that she could assimilate quickly all the new customs and the words most frequently used by the group she was to become a part of--so that finally, she would be judged on her own merits.

  Laura Esquivel

  Order, Groups, Would Be

  Guillermo Arriaga, F. G. Haghenbeck, Reyna Grande, Laura Esquivel, Javier Valdes (2013). “Atria Español Presents: The Best of Mexican Literature”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

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• Being in a foreign place, preferably for the first time, having seen many things and collected new impressions, and returning to an empty hotel room with an hour or so to blow. That mix often yields fine results.

  Stefan Sagmeister

  Blow, Yield, Rooms

  Interview with Zoe Kors, www.marandapleasantmedia.com.

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• My starting point was the search for my identity in foreign places, in places where I am estranged from myself.

  Rirkrit Tiravanija

  Identity, Starting, Starting Point

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• When one is traveling, everything looks brighter and lovelier. That does not mean it IS brighter and lovelier; it just means that sweet, kindly home suffers in comparison to tarted-up foreign places with all their jewels on.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Sweet, Home, Mean

  Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making”, p.50, Macmillan

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• I think people like me are in a relatively privileged position because we have to some extent chosen to live in foreign places. I would always make the distinction between those who are exiles in terms of being thrown out of the place they want to be, and others who are exiles in terms of going toward a place they would rather be.

  Pico Iyer

  Thinking, People, Want

  Source: scottlondon.com

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• I think that so many people don't understand how easy it is to be broke, how easy it is to find yourself in a situation where you're in an absolutely foreign place.

  Regina Spektor

  Thinking, People, Finding Yourself

  "Regina Spektor: 'I See My Family ... In Everybody'". Interview with Audie Cornish, kosu.org. October 3, 2016.

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• Literature and film have a way of lifting you from your own existence and transporting you to some foreign place and putting you in the shoes with an experience different than your own.

  Khaled Hosseini

  Shoes, Different, Literature

  "Web Exclusive Interview: Kite Runner author Khaled Hosseini to Speak on Refugee Crisis at Event in Lafayette". Interview with Peter Crooks, www.diablomag.com. April 25, 2009.

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• Every time I'm in a foreign place and a different city, I'm always asking around to say, OK, well, what's special here in this particular place? What makes these people move here and why?

  DJ /rupture

  Moving, Cities, People

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• A traveler's chief aim should be to make men wiser and better, and to improve their minds by the bad-as well as good example of what they deliver concerning foreign places.

  Jonathan Swift

  Men, Mind, Example

  Jonathan Swift (2005). “Gulliver's Travels - Literary Touchstone Edition”, p.253, Prestwick House Inc

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• Canoes, too, are unobtrusive; they don't storm the natural world or ride over it, but drift in upon it as a part of its own silence. As you either care about what the land is or not, so do you like or dislike quiet things--sailboats, or rainy green mornings in foreign places, or a grazing herd, or the ruins of old monasteries in the mountains. . . . Chances for being quiet nowadays are limited.

  John Graves

  Morning, Land, Silence

  John Graves (1960). “Goodbye to a river: a narrative”, Alfred a Knopf Inc

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• That experience of touching down in a totally foreign place is like having a blank canvas: You begin with nothing, but stroke by stroke you build a life. This process requires everything great art requires-risk-tasking, hope, a great deal of imagination, all the qualities that are the building blocks of art. You must be able to dream something nearly impossible and toil to bring it into existence.

  Edwidge Danticat

  Dream, Art, Block

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• It's these parallel universes when someone you love is sick. Your world is this completely foreign place involving radiation and tumor markers. Outside, people are buying sweaters.

  Katie Couric

  Love Is, Sweaters, People

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• Painting keeps me occupied in those moments when travel can be aimless and even disorienting. Mainly it is a way to register at least some of the new impressions of a foreign place, when its thrilling barrage can sometimes overwhelm you.

  Susan Minot

  Way, Painting, Sometimes

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• Some travelers think they want to go to foreign places but are dismayed when the places turn out actually to be foreign.

  Margaret Atwood

  Travel, Thinking, Want

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• I, in my own mind, have always thought of America as a place in the divine scheme of things that was set aside as a promised land...Any person with the courage, with the desire to tear up their roots, to strive for freedom, to attempt and dare to live in a strange and foreign place, to travel halfway across the world was welcome here.

  Ronald Reagan

  Land, Roots, America

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• All men are lonely. But sometimes it seems to me that we Americans are the loneliest of all. Our hunger for foreign places and new ways has been with us almost like a national disease. Our literature is stamped with a quality of longing and unrest, and our writers have been great wanderers.

  Carson McCullers

  Lonely, Men, Quality

  Carson McCullers (2017). “Carson McCullers: Stories, Plays & Other Writings”, p.408, Library of America

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• I like California because it still has the glamour and romanticism and exoticism of a very foreign place. It was the place that when I was young, I was raised on "I Love Lucy" and listening to the Grateful Dead and reading Jack Kerouac. They, to me, were all symbols of this very foreign sense of promise and movement. After all this time here I'm glad I still have it.

  Pico Iyer

  Reading, Grateful, California

  Source: scottlondon.com

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