Wallace Stegner Quotes

If they will let me go, I would leave Israel immediately. I would like to see the world, to exercise my freedom.

Many a boomerang does not return but chooses freedom instead.

Life on the open road is liberty... to be alone, to have few needs, to be unknown, everywhere a foreigner and at home, and to walk grandly and solitarily in conquest of the world.

My father died shortly after I was twenty-one; and being left well off, and having a taste for travel and adventure, I resigned, for a time, all pursuit of the almighty dollar, and became a desultory wanderer over the face of the earth.

I love traveling. I love just going about on my own, feeling I have no roots.

I need this wild life, this freedom.

A woman can walk miles without making one single step forward. As a child born in a harem, I instinctively knew that to live is to open closed doors. To live is to look outside. To live is to step out. Life is trespassing.

The great home of the soul is the open road.

Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road. Healthy, free, the world before me. The long brown path before me leading me wherever I choose. Henceforth, I ask not good fortune, I myself am good fortune. Henceforth, I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing.

Getting on the road and driving along a road at night, or even in the daytime and seeing the oceans or whatever, is always liberating.

Take my love, take my land Take me where I cannot stand I don't care, I'm still free You can't take the sky from me Take me out to the black Tell them I ain't comin' back Burn the land and boil the sea You can't take the sky from me There's no place I can be Since I found Serenity But you can't take the sky from me.

I travel because I like to move from place to place, I enjoy the sense of freedom it gives me, it pleases me to be rid of ties, responsibilities, duties, I like the unknown; I meet odd people who amuse me for a moment and sometimes suggest a theme for a composition; I am often tired of myself and I have a notion that by travel I can add to my personality and so change myself a little. I do not bring back from the journey quite the same self that I took

I do not wish to remove from my present prison to a prison a little larger. I wish to break all prisons.

I'm like a bird, I'll only fly away...

Freedom is about stopping the past.

If I weren't doing what I'm doing today... I'd be traveling around the world on the back of a motorcycle.

I like driving. A lot. I think that's something I just enjoy the most. I can, at a moment's notice, drive across the country if, you know, I had to.

Those songs are about getting out; they're not about getting out of family. It wasn't about how family life was curtailing because I didn't know family life.

I think a lot of nice things happen when you're driving, or when you're on a plane, or whatever. There's a certain freedom that comes along with motion.

As I traveled from one country to another, no one knew anything about me. So I could be anybody, I could speak as I wished, act as I wished, dress as I wished.

It's great to go on your own and discover new things just for yourself, to meet new people and all that. If you're all on your own, then there is nobody there to guide you and you have to make all the decisions for yourself. It's quite liberating in a way.

I longed from a tiny child to get away on my own. When I was five, I walked out along the sands from Redcar, nearly all the way to Hartlepool.

It's sort of what the Johnny and Devi stories are about, the idea of always being a slave to something.

I'm an escapist. I'm not a planner; I've never made a decision about anything in my life. The good thing about Africa is that you can escape forever. You can do what you want without someone looking over your shoulder.