Irvine Welsh Quotes

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

Much as I resented having to grow up in Des Moines, it gave me a real appreciation for every place in the world that's not Des Moines.

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

Being able to travel and see the world really makes me appreciate the blessings in my life. There are so many people that will never get a chance to see some of the things that I've seen during my travels. I'll never take that for granted.

A lot of the attitude I used to have about being from New York when I was younger just disappeared when I started to the rest of the world.

I like to take walks and getting out and seeing things. These experiences are so irreplaceable and give you a whole different perspective on the greater context that you're in. If I didn't try to take advantage of that, I'd be missing out on a lot of really interesting things.

Sometimes, hindsight is 20/20. Sometimes it takes another situation to kind of make you look back at a different situation and really see how good you had it, you know?

Every traveler has a home of his own, and he learns to appreciate it the more from his wandering.

Only the traveling is good which reveals to me the value of home and enables me to enjoy it better.

You must go on a long journey before you can really find out how wonderful home is.

It's often necessary to hit a second shot to really appreciate the first one.

At home we have lost the capacity to see what is before us. Travel shakes us out of our apathy, and we regain an attentiveness that heightens every experience. The exhilaration of travel has many sources, but surely one of them is that we recapture in some measure the unspoiled awareness of children.

I really would like to be involved in things and to understand things, and in some ways you've got to be careful what you wish for because I feel very, very blessed to have such an interesting life and to be able to have little snapshots of lives of people from many different parts of the world.

We live in a difficult but inspiring world, and there is so much out there that I want to record.

Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.

I did some traveling as an amateur and always loved the different places I saw.

One doesn't recognize the really important moments in one's life until it's too late.

I've backpacked to countries like Italy and Turkey and observed beautiful scenery, but then I realized that beauty was always very close to me. It is here in Belitung Island, where the rivers, beaches and the terrain captivate my attention most.

You know, now it's sinking in. It's taken me a long time to realize - and it is sinking in - how important this book is. And I have a certain distance now. I've done it such a long time ago.

I like going to places that are so different than where I'm from.

But when I really look back on my life, being really honest about it and now that I've got the chance to travel the world, seeing how a lot of little kids grow up - my life wasn't so bad.

No one realizes how beautiful it is to travel until he comes home and rests his head on his old, familiar pillow.

Walking out into the bush still feels the same as when I first came to Kenya in 1989, on the day the Berlin Wall came down.

I have an appreciation for everywhere I've been so far.

It's great that people are basically spending their two weeks of vacation to come out and be with us in some weird part of the world. And I think we owe it to them to take 'em to some cool places.