“Light is always more beautiful when it has to fight to be noticed, like sunlight fighting through the clouds after a rainstorm.”

“Beauty is not always as perfect as we imagine it to be, but it can be damn close if we learn to accept the scary parts or the ugly parts.”

“Travel is wishing for one more bite of whatever that just was.”

“Travel is little beds and cramped bathrooms. It’s old television sets and slow Internet connections. Travel is extraordinary conversations with ordinary people. It’s waiters, gas station attendants, and housekeepers becoming the most interesting people in the world. It’s churches that are compelling enough to enter. It’s McDonald’s being a luxury. It’s the realization that you may have been born in the wrong country. Travel is a smile that leads to a conversation in broken English. It’s the epiphany that pretty girls smile the same way all over the world. Travel is tipping 10% and being embraced for it. Travel is the same white T-shirt again tomorrow. Travel is accented sex after good wine and too many unfiltered cigarettes. Travel is flowing in the back of a bus with giggly strangers. It’s a street full of bearded backpackers looking down at maps. Travel is wishing for one more bite of whatever that just was. It’s the rediscovery of walking somewhere. It’s sharing a bottle of liquor on an overnight train with a new friend. Travel is “Maybe I don’t have to do it that way when I get back home.” It’s nostalgia for studying abroad that one semester. Travel is realizing that “age thirty” should be shed of its goddamn stigma.”

“we'll fight till he*l freezes over.... then we'll fight on the ice”

“A lady is, above all, someone who is passionately concerned that others be treated with dignity, fairness and justice. It has always been considered ladylike, for instance, to fight for these things on behalf of children, animals and one's husband. The difficulty you are encountering on the subject is that many people do not consider it ladylike to fight that battle on one's own behalf. Therefore, if a woman truly wishes to be ladylike, she will fight for dignity, fariness and justice not for herself but for all other women.”

“What takes more guts? To fight for your own life at any cost—or prove that you're willing to lose it?”