The Tao of Travel

Yes, take it all around, there is quite a good deal of information in the book. I regret this very much; but really it could not be helped: information appears to stew out of me naturally, like the precious attar of roses out of the otter. Sometimes it has seemed to me that I would give worlds if I could retain my facts; but it cannot be. The more I call up the sources, and the tighter I get, the more I leak wisdom. Therefore, I can only claim indulgence at the hands of the reader, not justification.

—

Roughing It

(1872)

JOHN STEINBECK ON TRAVELS WITH CHARLEY:" ANT-HILL ACTIVITY"

It's a formless, shapeless, aimless thing and it is even pointless. For this reason it may be the sharpest realism, because what I see around me is aimless and pointless—ant-hill activity.

—letter, July 1961, in

Steinbeck: A Life in Letters

(1975)

VALERIAN ALBANOV ON HIS ARCTIC DEATH MARCH: "I SEE THIS DIARY ... THROUGH A VEIL"

Fog all day long, with that dull light that makes one's eyes so terribly painful. At the moment mine hurt so much that I see this diary only as through a veil, and hot tears run down my cheeks. From time to time I have to stop writing and bury my head in my

malitsa

[a heavy, sacklike reindeer-hide sleeping bag]. Only in complete darkness does the pain gradually abate, allowing me to open my eyes again.

—

In the Land of White Death

(1917), first published in English in 2000, translated by Alison Anderson

APSLEY CHERRY-GARRARD: "I NEVER MEANT TO WRITE A BOOK"

When I went South I never meant to write a book: I rather despised those who did so as being of an inferior brand to those who did things and said nothing about them. But that they say nothing is too often due to the fact that they have nothing to say, or are too idle or too busy to learn how to say it. Everyone who has been through such an extraordinary experience has much to say if he has any faculty that way.

—Preface,

The Worst Journey in the World

(1923)

D. H. LAWRENCE: "MAKING LITTLE MARKS ON PAPER"

One says Mexico: one means, after all, one little town away South in the Republic: and in this little town, one rather crumbly adobe house built round two sides of a garden patio: and of this house, one spot on the deep shady veranda facing inwards to the trees, where there are an onyx table and three rocking chairs and one little wooden chair, a pot with carnations, and a person with a pen. We talk so grandly, in capital letters, of Morning in Mexico. All it amounts to is one little individual looking at a bit of sky and trees, then looking down at the page of his exercise book.

It is a pity we don't always remember this. When books come out with grand titles, like

The Future of America

or

The European Situation,

it's a pity we don't immediately visualize a thin or fat person, in a chair or in a bed, dictating to a bob-haired stenographer or making little marks on paper with a fountain pen.

—

Mornings in Mexico

(1927)

HENRI MICHAUX: "HE IS SUDDENLY AFRAID"

Preface: A man who knows neither how to travel nor how to keep a journal has put together this travel journal. But at the moment of signing he is suddenly afraid. So he casts the first stone. Here.

—The Author.—

Ecuador

(1928)

FREYA STARK: "I TRAVELED SINGLE-MINDEDLY FOR FUN"

I came to the conclusion that some more ascetic reason than mere enjoyment should be found if one wishes to travel in peace: to do things for fun smacks of levity, immorality almost, in our utilitarian world. And though personally I think the world is wrong, and I know that in my heart of hearts that it is a most excellent reason to do things merely because one likes the doing of them, I would advise all those who wish to see unwrinkled brows in passport offices to start out ready labeled as entomologists, anthropologists, or whatever other -ology they think suitable and propitious.

But as this book is intended for the Public, and is therefore necessarily truthful, I must admit that for my own party I traveled single-mindedly for fun.

—

The Valleys of the Assassins

(1934)

GERALD BRENAN: "THE GIRL WITH THE UNFORGETTABLE FACE"