Rolf Potts Book Recommendations & Book Mentions

Rolf Potts

"When our spirits lift at the start of a journey, there is usually an element of relief. Travel releases us from the treadmill of domestic habit. Even if it goes no further than our choice of clothes, there is an impulse of defiance." ―Ian Littlewood, Sultry Climates (2001)

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Rolf Potts

"To be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery." --Rebecca Solnit, paraphrasing Walter Benjamin, in A Field Guide to Getting Lost (2006)

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Rolf Potts

"There are deeper reasons to travel -- itches and tickles on the underbelly of the unconscious mind. We go where we need to go, and then try to figure out what we're doing there." --Jeff Greenwald, Shopping for Buddhas (1990)

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Rolf Potts

"I can't think of anything that excites a greater sense of childlike wonder than to be in a country where you are ignorant of almost everything. ...Your whole existence becomes a series of interesting guesses." --Bill Bryson, Neither Here Nor There (1993)

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Rolf Potts

"Most people see the world as a threatening place, and, because they do, the world turns out, indeed, to be a threatening place." --Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist (1988)

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Rolf Potts

"From this hour I ordain myself loos'd of limits and imaginary lines, Going where I list, my own master total and absolute, ...Gently, but with undeniable will divesting myself of the holds that would hold me." --Walt Whitman, "Song of the Open Road" (1856)

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Rolf Potts

"Two questions we should ask of any strong landscape are these: firstly, what do I know when I am in this place that I can know nowhere else? And then, vainly, what does this place know of me that I cannot know of myself?" Robert Macfarlane, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (2012)

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Rolf Potts

"We are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of 'security.' And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine—and before we know it our lives are gone." —Sterling Hayden, Wanderer (1963)

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Rolf Potts

"The practice of soulful travel is to discover the overlapping point between history and everyday life. Curiosity about the extraordinary in the ordinary moves the heart of the traveler intent on seeing behind the veil of tourism." --Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage (1998)

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Rolf Potts

"What I found appealing in life abroad was the inevitable sense of helplessness it would inspire. Equally exciting would be the work involved in overcoming that helplessness. There would be a goal involved, and I liked having goals." --David Sedaris, Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000)

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