Geographical Orientation Quotes

Bel Air, I am convinced, was laid out by some diabolic sadist who deliberately decided not to use a compass or a surveyor.

North was only a direction indicated by a compass--if a man had one, that is, for otherwise there was no north or south or east or west; there was only the brooding desolation.

And by the same token, I appreciate math, because I can't do math. If I have to read a map or figure out the tip on a restaurant bill, I might start to tear up a little bit.

I never, in any city I've ever been in, never remember the names of streets. The longest place I ever lived in was for five years and I didn't know the name of the next street over.

There must be something innate about maps, about this one specific way of picturing our world and our relation to it, that charms us, calls to us, won’t let us look anywhere else in the room if there’s a map on the wall.

Eurasia's main axis is east/west, whereas the main axis of the Americas is north/south. Eurasia's east/west axis meant that species domesticated in one part of Eurasia could easily spread thousands of miles at the same latitude, encountering the same day-length and climate to which they were already adapted.

I wisely started with a map.

It should not be believed that a march of three or four days in the wrong direction can be corrected by a countermarch. As a rule, this is to make two mistakes instead of one.

I'm really drawn to West Coast composers and I think it has a little something to do with looking across the Pacific instead of looking across the Atlantic.

Turkey is an Eastern country if you come from the West and a Western country if you come from the East

Although wherever you are going is always in front of you, there is no such thing as straight ahead.

The axis of the earth sticks out visibly through the center of each and every town or city.

The lake was always my orienting point when my dad was teaching me how to not get lost. The lake is east, so you'll always know that. It's a weird thing where you can kind of feel where you're at in Chicago, and when I was downtown, I was like, 'Oh, it feels more open over here. That must be east.' It felt like a little secret thing.