Margaret Drabble Quotes

When I travel, I feel more like a nomad than a tourist.

In a certain sense, a writer is an exile, an outsider, always reporting on things, and it is part of his life to keep on the move. Travel is natural.

All my books reflect travel adventures of some kind, and all have a soul: a spiritual or mystical underpinning.

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.

Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.

People around the world were moving from one place to another. No one was staying.

The seeker embarks on a journey to find what he wants and discovers, along the way, what he needs.

I'm inspired by everything, really. I'm inspired by locations and travel, I'm inspired by art and music, I'm inspired by people. When my curiosity peaks and I want to know everything about the subject, I want to know how I can get more deeply involved.

Walking gets too boring, when you learn how to fly.

Things happen when people are not where they belong, and the world moves forward and back by that principle.

I hoped that the trip would be the best of all journeys: a journey into ourselves.

... the grand tour is just the inspired man's way of heading home.

I love to move like a mouse inside this puzzle for the body, balancing the wish to be lost with the need to be found.

A wise man travels to discover himself.

Every change of place becomes a delight.

I'm trying to find myself as a person, sometimes that's not easy to do. Millions of people live their entire lives without finding themselves. But it is something I must do. The best way for me to find myself as a person is to prove to myself that I am an actress.

I don't know who I am. But I do know who I'm not. I have occasionally tried playing people I'm definitely not, and that wasn't a very pleasant experience.

We read books to find out who we are.

Travel is an attitude, a state of mind. It is not residence, it is motion.

My direction? Anywhere. Because one is always nearer by not keeping still.

For years, copying other people, I tried to know myself. From within, I couldn't decide what to do. Unable to see, I heard my name being called. Then I walked outside.

My, my. A body does get around.

A man is never more his single separate self than when he sets out on a journey.

What I love about music, when you can look at something and be like, "Wow, what's this all about?" You can't really picture what these people look like - is it one guy, or a band making music in a garage?

The imagination is a species of knowledge, knowledge that can take the form of discovery.