Thomas Wolfe Quotes

Man hath still either toys or care: But hath no root, nor to one place is tied, but ever restless and irregular, about this earth doth run and ride. He knows he hath a home, but scarce knows where; He says it is so far, that he has quite forgot how to go there.

It would be nice to travel if you knew where you were going and where you would live at the end or do we ever know, do we ever live where we live, we're always in other places, lost, like sheep.

Perhaps this is our strange and haunting paradox here in America - that we are fixed and certain only when we are in movement.

Place and displacement have always been central for me. A type of insecurity goes with that: you are always following the cues, like learning the dance steps when the dance is already under way.

Ever'body's askin' that. "What we comin' to?" Seems to me we don't never come to nothin'. Always on the way.

I feel I'm moving toward as well as away from something, and anything is possible.

I'm kind of addicted to moving.

We go along, without a fixed itinerary, yet at the same time with an end (what end?) in mind, and with the aim of reaching the end. A search for the end, a dread of the end: the obverse and the reverse of the same act.

I left home at 17 and I've been on the road ever since.

It is hard to begin to move when you don't know where you are moving, how to move, or if you are going to get there.

Not all those who wander are lost.

I have been working for over 30 years and am always wondering about where I am and where I am going. It does not stop and become a fixed event of achievement.

Oh, my ways are strange ways and new ways and old ways, And deep ways and steep ways and high ways and low, I'm at home and at ease on a track that I know not, And restless and lost on a road that I know.

When you grow up by the sea, you spend a good deal of time looking at the horizon. You wonder what on Earth the waves might bring - and where the sea might deposit you - until one day you know you have lived between two places, the scene of arrival and the point of departure.

My life is the road, man. I need to keep moving.

I wanted to leave home, and I didn't know where I was going or what I was going to do or what would happen. That's youth, though. Being fixated on things. I was fixated on being a writer.

Every day, it's a different country, different time zone. If you asked me where home was, I've never felt like I've had that. My idea of comfort is to leave a place. Two weeks is sort of my max.

We are not rootless vagabonds. We are on our way to power.

My address is like my shoes. It travels with me wherever I go.

I'm a nomad. A Jewish road warrior. I do not have a concept of home. I wish I did. But I live with the idea that we have to get out of town before dawn.

I lived in several hotels, yeah. You have to try to make it home.

Youth is such a fascinating and volatile concoction of vulnerability, dependence, restlessness, relentlessness. You're still learning the terms of the world and of the self, in a very immediate way.

I feel like 'Harlem River' was me putting one foot out the door of New York, and 'Still Life' is between Point A and Point B. It's the grey area.

Human nature demands recognition. Without it, people lose their sense of purpose and become dissatisfied, restless, and unproductive.

Waiting is a dry desert between where we are and where we want to be. (Finding My Way Home)