“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.”

“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.”

“Never did get my curiosity cured,' she said. 'Some people sit around and wait for the world to poke them. Right here in this old curiosity shop of a world, they say, 'Poke me, world,' Well, you have to keep the challenges coming on. Make them up if necessary.”

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

“With a nearly desperate sense of isolation and a growing suspicion that I lived in an alien land, I took to the road in search of places where change did not mean ruin and where time and men and deeds connected.”

“It's a contention of Heat Moon's -- believing as he does any traveler who misses the journey misses about all he's going to get-- that a man becomes his attentions. His observations and curiosity, they make and remake him.”

“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.”