Joanna Lumley Quotes

Dig into life with wild roving abandon, opening your mind to the delicious possibilities that perplex the mind, entice the heart, and excite the spirit.

There is that romanticized idea of what a bookstore can be, what a library can be, what a shop can be. And to me, they are that. These are places that open doors into other worlds if only you're open to them.

There's books that are about places we will never go, and then there's books that inspire us to go.

Growing up, I never gave a thought to being a writer. All I ever wanted to be was a traveler and explorer. Science-fiction allowed me to go places that were otherwise inaccessible, which is why I started reading it. I was going to be a lawyer, but I got saved.

No place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.

I like to read, even though it was really tough, because I could go anywhere in the world in a book, and I could have so many adventures in a book.

I just love stories, and I love movies, learning and seeing the world. Growing up in Iowa, it was like, you wanna see the world? Movies can help you do that.

Space is a canvas, as large and blank as any ever created, for it is indeed creation itself, and it calls to us to paint upon it with our own dreams and imaginations anything we wish, anything we want, and anything we can imagine.

The sight of the huge world put mad ideas into me, as if I could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after the other...

Exploration is a wonderful way to open our eyes to the world, & to truly see that impossible is just a word.

I love to travel. During normal workdays, sometimes it feels like I have to bludgeon ideas out of my soul - but when I'm traveling, relaxed and unpressured, the ideas just spill out.

When you're a little kid, you are small, your life is small - and you're terrifically aware of that. But when you read, you can ride Arabian horses across the desert, you can be a dogsledder.

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

I've always been inspired by small details that make me wander. My mother would ask me, 'What are you looking at so intensely?' I would answer, 'Everything and nothing.' She really supported my wanderings, called me Marco Polo.

I think that it is expansive for the mind, for the fantasy of children and grownups alike, to understand that the world is huge. There is so much in the world to experience, and the odds are so essential to life.

Books are magic: you never know where they're going to end up.

I see my path, but I don't know where it leads. Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel it.

My children just want to get at the world; it is so pleasantly surprising to witness that.

When I'm in a place like Iceland, I allow myself to take a little more time to divert off onto other paths creatively for a while and see what comes to me.

I grew up in South Africa and I would look at maps and we were at the bottom of the world. There was this whole thing up there. I was always reading encyclopedias about the world. So travel was something I was always attracted to.

I can create countries just as I can create the actions of my characters. That is why a lot of travel seems to me a waste of time.

As a young boy growing up in rural India, most of what I knew of the world was what I could see around me. But each night, I would look at the Moon - it was impossibly far away, yet it held a special attraction because it allowed me to dream beyond my village and country, and think about the rest of the world and space.

When the whistle blew and the call stretched thin across the night, one had to believe that any journey could be sweet to the soul.

There was part of me that wanted to see the world and travel to distant places, but I could only do it in my imagination, so I read ferociously and imagined things.

My favourite words are possibilities, opportunities and curiosity. I think if you are curious, you create opportunities, and then if you open the doors, you create possibilities.