Jessica

“A connoisseur of woe needs fresh worries from time to time, or he will become complacent.”
― Peter Mayle, A Year in Provence

“As I held her and caressed her and kissed her naked flesh, I felt a strange and powerful awareness of the imbalance and awkwardness of the human body. Holding Naoko in my arms, I wanted to explain to her, "I am having sex with you now. I am inside you. But really this is nothing. It doesn't matter. It is nothing but the joining of two bodies. All we are doing is telling each other things that can only be told by the rubbing together of two imperfect lumps of flesh. By doing this, we are sharing our imperfection." But of course I could never have said such a thing with any hope of being understood. I just went on holding her tightly.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Besides, what can be so delightful as the perpetual novelty—the exhaustless current of new ideas suggested by travelling? We read, to gather thought and knowledge; travelling is a book of the Creator’s own writing, and imparts sublimer wisdom than the printed words of man. Were I exiled perforce, I might repine, for the heart naturally yearns for home. But to adorn that home with recollections; to fly abroad from the hive, like the bee, and return laden with the sweets of travel—scenes, which haunt the eye—wild adventures, that enliven the imagination—knowledge, to enlighten and free the mind from clinging, deadening prejudices—a wider circle of sympathy with our fellow-creatures;—these are the uses of travel, for which I am convinced every one is the better and the happier.”
― Mary Shelley, Rambles in Germany and Italy: Volume II, European Travel in the 19th Century

“If I were going uphill, I was relatively happy since I would sooner or later be going downhill. Whereas, if I were going downhill, I wasn’t all that happy because I knew I would eventually have to be going uphill.”
― George Meegan, Longest Walk: An Odyssey of the Human Spirit