Martha Gellhorn Quotes

The French word for wanderlust or wandering is 'errance.' The etymology is the same as 'error.' So to wander is to make mistakes. In other words, to make mistakes, to make errors is sort of the idea of learning through trial and error, allowing the mistakes to be part of the process.

I think I write about things that are mysterious to me.

Man is by nature restless. When left too long in one place he will inevitably grow bored, unmotivated, and unproductive.

A writer looking for subjects inquires not after what he loves best, but after what he alone loves at all.

It's fun wandering around other people's minds.

I don't mind being a tourist at all, and a gawker. I just walk around.

Kids need stuff which is different than what their life is that they can kind of live through.

The things that keep nagging at you are the ones worth exploring.

The age in which we live, this non-stop distraction, is making it more impossible for the young generation to ever have the curiosity or discipline... because you need to be alone to find out anything.

Your true traveller 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.

I'm a thinker and feeler and dreamer and explorer.

Mostly, I just waste my time.

I've always thought that a good book should be either the entry point inward, to learn about yourself, or a door outward, to open you up to new worlds.

I always felt that everything that happened was incredibly exhilarating and massively puzzling at the same time. I can even remember, when I was six or seven, digging a hole beneath a tree. And I would go into this tomb, this cave that I had made, and would lie there, meditating, for hours.

Anyone can sit down and write two pages of a novel, then forget about it, and a week later write five pages of a screenplay, then forget about it, and a week later start another novel... etc, etc.

If you know everything, it keeps you from writing. You don't want a story to burn you out instead of surprising you.

It's weird to get asked questions that I don't know the answers to... But I like getting questions I don't know the answer to because maybe it's the first time I've been asked to articulate these things.

I have been a nomad for most of my thirties, even creatively.

It's been a habit of mine since childhood to always be looking around. When I go shopping, I have more fun observing the town than shopping.

On the Road that I have taken, one day walking I awaken, amazed to see where I've come, where I'm going, where I'm from.

I am myself by inclination an investigator.

Every day I walk out into the world / to be dazzled, then to be reflective.

Everyone thinks writers must know more about the inside of the human head, but that's wrong. They know less, that's why they write. Trying to find out what everyone else takes for granted.

I don't write books because I have answers. I write books because I have questions. What we are is the questions that we ask, not the answers that we provide. It's all about the process of self-examination. I think that's what the best writing always contains.

To find out who you are is like putting yourself on a psychiatric couch, but you have nobody to help you. Really it isn't easy. I was talking with my nephew this morning and he gave me one of the best quotes I've heard in years 'Personal style is curiosity about oneself.'