Jason Wilson > Quotes

“They talk of my drinking but never my thirst.

- Scottish proverb”
― Jason Wilson, Boozehound: On the Trail of the Rare, the Obscure, and the Overrated in Spirits [A Travel and Cocktail Recipe Book]

“But part of education of travel lies in seeing things with fresh and ignorant eyes -- and in being wrong. Which is why it's important to check in with that younger traveler from time to time, to retrace the journeys that remain vivid in my mind, to ask new questions of where I've gone before.”
― jason wilson , The Best American Travel Writing 2021: Essays on Diverse Cultures and the Joy of Feeling Elsewhere

“I don’t think I verbalized it to anyone, including myself, but I knew then that I wanted to be a perpetual traveler. I was happiest receiving and experiencing new information about the world, in situ.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2021

“Holding on to offenses emotionally incarcerates us, but forgiveness is a key that liberates.”
― Jason Wilson, Battle Cry: Waging and Winning the War Within

“The beauty of good writing is that it transports the reader inside another person’s experience in some other physical place and culture and, at its best, evokes a palpable feeling of being in a specific moment in time and space.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2021

“Not at Lehman Brothers, which collapsed in 2008, and not on Wall Street; Greece was where the fire broke out. One heard the word contamination again and again, but this time it was no imperial cultural contamination, no creeping process of civilization. This time the crisis was a contagion: debts and obligations that would never be repaid, a gradual deterioration of the financial immune system.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2014: A Collection Guest Edited by Paul Theroux—Wonder, Humor, Exhilaration

“Restoring what has broken is a reminder to be careful with that is here now.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2021: Essays on Diverse Cultures and the Joy of Feeling Elsewhere

“I will never say no to viewing my friends’ vacation photos, primarily because one of our tacit promises when we travel is that we’ll bring back a good story—of our heightened state of living and the exaggerated adventures that befell us—and hope to let others live vicariously through it.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2014: A Collection Guest Edited by Paul Theroux—Wonder, Humor, Exhilaration

“That perhaps I could walk my way to reclaiming enough of an illusion of safety to survive the next four years in this country.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2019

“An honest, engaging traveler inspires us to make our own journeys and helps us to see and understand new (to us) places. Good travel writing is about human connection.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2019

“No one who is learning should ever feel stupid,”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2014: A Collection Guest Edited by Paul Theroux—Wonder, Humor, Exhilaration

“If you came to this article looking for an answer, change what you're looking for. Don't look for answers, look for the questions. The more you ask yourself, the more you'll learn about yourself. Keep traveling. Go far, explore often, meet new people and make new friends. Just do so not to escape life, but to enrich it. Catch flights, and feelings. You can't avoid pain and suffering. But you can upgrade and embrace it.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2021: Essays on Diverse Cultures and the Joy of Feeling Elsewhere

“There’s a lot of bad travel writing. And bad travel writing can be self-indulgent, ill-informed, overwrought with purple prose, and lacking context. Worse, it can be full of prejudice and stereotypes, and historically was an instrument of colonialism and propaganda. But the best travel writing is none of these.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2019

“Pleasure demands presence. It invites you to inhabit your body more fully; no part of you is held at remote.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2021: Essays on Diverse Cultures and the Joy of Feeling Elsewhere

“Because here's a thing I've come to understand of late: context really does affect flavor. A place, its atmosphere, the people within it, their mood (and ours) genuinely change the way things taste. A restaurant lasagna has to be twice as good as your mother's or that one you had on that trip to Italy -- for it to be remind you of it even a little. A rack fo smoked pork ribs will never taste as good on a ceramic plate atop a tablecloth as it does from within a Styrofoam box on the hood of your car, downwind a roadside smoker, I hope that I never find out what Waffle House tastes like while sober, eaten in broad daylight.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2021: Essays on Diverse Cultures and the Joy of Feeling Elsewhere

“Drinking the same wines all the time is really boring.”
― Jason Wilson, Godforsaken Grapes: A Slightly Tipsy Journey through the World of Strange, Obscure, and Underappreciated Wine

“Just like anything in life, there are positive and negative reasons to do something. Luckily with travel, whether you do it for a positive or negative reason, there is always much to be gained. So maybe we don't use the word "addiction" when thinking of travel. Perhaps the better way to look at it is to check in with the intent behind your travel. If you find yourself traveling often with no apparent reason, not even an interest in the destination, maybe ask yourself: Is there a form of suffering you're trying to avoid?”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2021: Essays on Diverse Cultures and the Joy of Feeling Elsewhere

“Efficiency is a capitalist term that assumes one has the goal of achieving a certain level of productivity.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2014: A Collection Guest Edited by Paul Theroux—Wonder, Humor, Exhilaration

“What gives value to travel is fear.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2014: A Collection Guest Edited by Paul Theroux—Wonder, Humor, Exhilaration

“The pause we're experiencing can highlight a basic truth: we may or may not walk this way again, and even if we do, we will never be precisely the same people who experienced that journey in the first place. Travel is only ever about a moment in time and space, but it's also about how we choose to hold that moment in our memories. It is always both present and past.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2021: Essays on Diverse Cultures and the Joy of Feeling Elsewhere

“The genre is called travel writing for a reason: it involves a traveler. Mostly, the traveler in good travel writing is not a local and doesn’t pretend to be.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2019

“There’s a saying in Haiti: A rich man travels, a poor man leaves.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2019

“During an open discussion at a conference, former first lady Michelle Obama stressed the importance for men to communicate with and support one another. “Y’all should get you some friends. . . . Y’all need to go talk to each other about your stuff, because there’s so much of it! Talk about why y’all are the way you are.”1 I agree, but unfortunately, we have been taught and conditioned to believe misleading mantras such as “real men don’t cry” or “what doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger.” As a result, we suppress our emotions to keep from looking weak. Unlike women, responsible men, especially African American men of the Most High, do not hang out enough with their friends. We can’t even fathom planning an excursion out of state just for fun! Many of us are so responsible that we have forgotten what fun feels like—always focusing on what needs to be done instead of what we need to do for ourselves to keep our minds healthy and emotions stable. Men lack “safe spaces” in which we can feel free from condemnation and release what’s weighing us down. But every time I’ve been present when men gather in a “judgment-free zone” and are encouraged to share their burdens, I’ve seen how one man taking a step out and expressing the heaviness of his heart can cause a domino effect. With the ice broken, the men talk for hours, and previously clogged tear ducts open up to allow tears to flow naturally, freely.”
― Jason Wilson, Battle Cry: Waging and Winning the War Within

“Will I be able to spare my heart while dissecting memories of the past?”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2020

“Try something new. Try something strange. Expose yourself to flavors you've never considered before. Taste something - anything - that makes you stop for a moment and pay attention and experience.”
― Jason Wilson, Boozehound: On the Trail of the Rare, the Obscure, and the Overrated in Spirits [A Travel and Cocktail Recipe Book]

“If there are certain moments when I question the value of travel writing, I also know that it's important for the traveler to eventually return to where he or she came from, to write and try to capture the experience of being an outsider in an unfamiliar place. Yes, much of travel writing is soulless and transactional, listicles and charticles and "if you go" tips. Yet as its most ideal, the worth of the genre lies in exploring the tensions of our interior journey vs. our exterior itinerary, in examining our expectations (and hopes and biases) of a destination vs. the reality of of what we found, and in measuring the person we are at home vs. the person we become abroad.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2021: Essays on Diverse Cultures and the Joy of Feeling Elsewhere

“There can be a radical honesty to pleasure, a profound nakedness in surrendering fully to the unguarded, unselfconscious states of enjoyment. It's harder to hide or dissimulate when you're enjoying yourself.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2021: Essays on Diverse Cultures and the Joy of Feeling Elsewhere

“Peace has to be in us before it can be around us”
― Jason Wilson, Battle Cry: Waging and Winning the War Within

“Together, all four now subscribed to a set of teachings that boiled down to “the law of nonresistance,” as they described it—fundamentally, making the best of the current moment.”
― Jason Wilson, The Best American Travel Writing 2021

“In the beginning, when Yah saw it wasn’t good for man to be alone, He created Eve to be his “help” (Gen. 2:18 KJV). The Hebrew translation for the word help in this verse is êzer (ay’-zer),1 which means to surround, protect, or succor; assistance and support in times of hardship and distress.2 This is why êzer is the same word we use when referring to the Most High as our “help and shield” (Ps. 115:9 NLT). Sadly, much due to our insecurities, many of us would rather have women play the role of a slave than a source of strength who helps us push through our inadequacies. Accompanying my dad’s whorish behavior was his dogmatic demeanor.”
― Jason Wilson, Battle Cry: Waging and Winning the War Within