William Least Heat-Moon Quotes

Quotes about:

Adventure Journey Travel Writing

Be careful going in search of adventure - it's ridiculously easy to find.

William Least Heat-Moon

Travel, Adventure, Easy

William Least Heat Moon (1991). “Blue Highways: A Journey Into America”, Mariner Books

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A true journey, no matter how long the travel takes, has no end.

William Least Heat-Moon

Journey, Long, Matter

William Least Heat Moon (1991). “Blue Highways: A Journey Into America”, Mariner Books

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I can't say, over the miles, that I had learned what I had wanted to know because I hadn't known what I wanted to know. But I did learn what I didn't know I wanted to know.

William Least Heat-Moon

Miles, Wanted, Knows

Edgar I. Ailor, William Least Heat-Moon (2012). “BLUE HIGHWAYS Revisited”, p.311, University of Missouri Press

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What you've done becomes the judge of what you're going to do - especially in other people's minds. When you're traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.

William Least Heat-Moon

Travel, Carpe Diem, Past

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At the beginning we learn to travel, then we travel to learn.

William Least Heat-Moon

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You never feel better than when you start feeling good after you've been feeling bad.

William Least Heat-Moon

Feel Better, Feel Good, Feelings

William Least Heat-Moon (2012). “Blue Highways: A Journey into America”, p.61, Hachette UK

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There are two kinds of adventurers: those who go truly hoping to find adventure and those who go secretly hoping they won't.

William Least Heat-Moon

Travel, Adventure, Two

William Least Heat-Moon (2012). “Blue Highways: A Journey into America”, p.59, Hachette UK

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On the old highway maps of America, the main routes were red and the back roads blue. Now even the colors are changing.

William Least Heat-Moon

Change, Blue, Color

Edgar I. Ailor, William Least Heat-Moon (2012). “BLUE HIGHWAYS Revisited”, p.11, University of Missouri Press

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Instead of insight, maybe all a man gets is strength to wander for a while. Maybe the only gift is a chance to inquire, to know nothing for certain. An inheritance of wonder and nothing more.

William Least Heat-Moon

Men, Inheritance, Chance

William Least Heat Moon (1991). “Blue Highways: A Journey Into America”, Mariner Books

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Without the errors, wrong turns and blind alleys, without the doubling back and misdirection and fumbling and chance discoveries, there was not one bit of joy in walking the labyrinth.

William Least Heat-Moon

Errors, Discovery, Joy

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What is it in man that for a long while lies unknown and unseen only one day to emerge and push him into a new land of the eye, a new region of the mind, a place he has never dreamed of? Maybe it's like the force in spores lying quietly under asphalt until the day they push a soft, bulbous mushroom head right through the pavement. There's nothing you can do to stop it.

William Least Heat-Moon

Lying, Eye, Men

"Blue Highways". Book by William Least Heat-Moon, 1982.

21 Copy quote
The open road is a beckoning, a strangeness, a place where a man can lose himself.

William Least Heat-Moon

Motivational, Travel, Journey

Edgar I. Ailor, William Least Heat-Moon (2012). “BLUE HIGHWAYS Revisited”, p.11, University of Missouri Press

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Instead of insight, maybe all a man gets is strength to wander for a while.

William Least Heat-Moon

Men, Wander, Insight

William Least Heat Moon (1991). “Blue Highways: A Journey Into America”, Mariner Books

16 Copy quote
Get out and find ...the country. And ourselves.

William Least Heat-Moon

Country, Exploration

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Life doesn't happen along interstates. It's against the law.

William Least Heat-Moon

Law, Interstate, Happens

William Least Heat-Moon (2012). “Blue Highways: A Journey into America”, p.15, Hachette UK

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Beware thoughts that come in the night. They aren't turned properly; they come in askew, free of sense and restriction, deriving from the most remote of sources.

William Least Heat-Moon

Night, Source, Restriction

William Least Heat-Moon (2012). “Blue Highways: A Journey into America”, p.8, Hachette UK

7 Copy quote
The biggest hindrance to learning is fear of showing one's self a fool.

William Least Heat-Moon

Self, Fool, Hindrance

William Least Heat-Moon (2012). “Blue Highways: A Journey into America”, p.233, Hachette UK

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New ways of seeing can disclose new things But turn the question around. Do new things make for new ways of seeing?

William Least Heat-Moon

Vision, Way, Turns

William Least Heat Moon (1991). “Blue Highways: A Journey Into America”, Mariner Books

8 Copy quote
One of the sweet and expectable aspects of life afloat is the perpetual present moment one lives in and a perception that time is nothing more than the current, an eternal flowing back to the sea.

William Least Heat-Moon

Sweet, Sea, Perception

William Least Heat-Moon (1999). “River-Horse: A Voyage Across America”, p.51, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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...who can say where a voyage starts - not the the actual passage but the dream of a journey and its urge to find a way?

William Least Heat-Moon

Dream, Journey, Voyages

William Least Heat-Moon (1999). “River-Horse: A Voyage Across America”, p.4, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Historical awareness is a kind of resurrection.

William Least Heat-Moon

History, Historical, Kind

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A man who couldn't make things go right could at least go. He could quit trying to get out of the way of life. Chuck routine. Live the real jeopardy of circumstance. It was a question of dignity.

William Least Heat-Moon

Real, Men, Trying

William Least Heat Moon (1991). “Blue Highways: A Journey Into America”, Mariner Books

6 Copy quote
Adventure is putting one's ignorance into motion.

William Least Heat-Moon

Adventure, Ignorance

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Boredom lies only with the traveler's limited perception and his failure to explore deeply enough. After a while, I found my perception limited.

William Least Heat-Moon

Lying, Boredom, Perception

William Least Heat Moon (1991). “Blue Highways: A Journey Into America”, Mariner Books

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The negative cost of Lewis and Clark entering the Garden of Eden is that later expeditions regardless of what they were intended to do, later expeditions did not deal with the native peoples with the intelligence with the almost kindly resolve that Lewis and Clark did.

William Least Heat-Moon

Garden, Eden, Negative

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Born: August 27, 1939
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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