Ann Cotton Quotes

You can learn a lot when you play in a little town in Holland or Western Australia, and you learn different things than you would learn playing a big city.

The best education I have ever received was through travel.

I think I am typical in believing that the Peace Corps trained us brilliantly and then did little more except send us into the bush. It was not a bad way of running things.

My writing is a combination of three elements. The first is travel: not travel like a tourist, but travel as exploration. The second is reading literature on the subject. The third is reflection.

My history writing was based on what I saw in strange, exotic places rather than just reading books.

I haven't even graduated from high school yet - and I've realised in the last four years, with all the travelling I've done and all of the movies I've made, that the world is my classroom. I've experienced things I don't know you can necessarily get from reading a history book.

One of the advantages of travelling the world is that you get to know the world broadly. And one of the advantages of staying in one place is that you get to know the world deeply.

Living at the YMCA in Harlem dramatically broadened my view of the world.

In general, I avoided giving lectures or attaching myself while abroad to a university. To learn what I wanted to know, I went instead to rural communities and onto actual farms. Talk with university people, government officials and U.S. personnel stationed in the country was much less rewarding for me.

I always spend time exploring the customs and attitudes of the countries I'm using for locations, and interviewing the people who live there. I've visited over 90 countries thus far.

The benefits of studying abroad are huge. You can pick up a new language, develop a love for another culture, and pick up new skills, hobbies and work experience to boost your CV.

I got over the whole British eating-with-hands phobia very quickly when I was working with Oxfam in Tanzania.

I learnt a lot in Germany, and the German mentality really helped me. It was an enormous step in my life.

I am so convinced of the advantages of looking at mankind instead of reading about them, . . . that I think there should be a law amongst us to set our young men abroad for a term among the few allies our wars have left us.

I'd like to be able to experience things. That's the best thing for my work - to be somebody who does get to travel and observe people.

Personally, I now aim for one month of overseas relocation or high-intensity learning (tango, fighting, whatever) for every two months of work projects.

I got a sense of the amazingness of ordinary life, and I became aware of the marvel that we're around to begin with. I visited a lot of extreme communities, like the Amish, Hasidic Jews, and serpent-handlers. And I was proud, because I think I'm the first person to ever out-Bible-talk a Jehovah's Witness. After four hours, he said, "Okay, I have to go."

I think we should try to be responsible and educate ourselves. I'm simply doing that and traveling, learning first hand, and seeing first hand what's going on.

In a short amount of time, I've lived so much, had so many experiences and met so many different types of people and even lived in so many countries. If I had been in school, I'd be learning about the world from books.

When a traveler returneth home, let him not leave the countries where he hath traveled altogether behind him.

I really like to discover a new culture, a new country, a new rhythm of living. I really, really like that. I think that's the most enriching thing, for my nature, because I like the psychology of people.

travel is compost for the mind

I always tell my students the same thing. And that's to live life, and to read very voraciously without any definite program. To travel, to meet people, to talk to people, to listen very carefully, and not interrupt, but listen to their own grandparents speak of their families.

Going out and not only meeting the kids, but meeting the teachers and the librarians and seeing the world, fills me up.

I travel as much as I do. It isn't the life I expected. I don't know what dust of pollen will come back with me from these travels.But I must trust that I will not treat frivolously the glimpses I've been given into other places and others' lives.