To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong.

Perhaps travel cannot prevent bigotry, but by demonstrating that all peoples cry, laugh, eat, worry, and die, it can introduce the idea that if we try and understand each other, we may even become friends.

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.

Travel, we agreed, was a litmus test: if we can make the best of the chaos and serendipity that we'd inevitably meet in transit, then we'd surely be able to sail through the rest of life together just fine. So far, we'd done pretty well.

Travel, we agreed, was a litmus test: if we could make the best of the chaos and serendipity that we’d inevitably meet in transit, then we’d surely be able to sail through the rest of life together just fine. So far, we’d done pretty well.

The best part of traveling is finding yourself.

Travel is a fantastic self-development tool, because it extricates you from the values of your
culture and shows you that another society can live with entirely different values and still function and
not hate themselves.

I find I learn much more by traveling than by staying at home.

The best part is meeting people from all over who, like me, travel all over the world and never really feel like they belong somewhere.

People love a trip. Even a shitty trip! On the old Dating Game they used to send people to Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia. You remember this? When it was behind the Iron Curtain. And people would be like, "We're going to Dubrov--what the fuck? What? ...Who cares, we're Going!" Because people love a trip, they don't care where it is. And I'll tell ya why they love a trip: because people think, "On a trip, I might get laid. It's not happening here, but Cleveland? That's where it could happen."

Travelling has taught me that people are the same all over the world – some irritating, some helpful.

Anyhow, I've learned one thing now. You only really get to know people when you've had a jolly good row with them. Then and then only can you judge their true characters!

"I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more."

(Letter to John Banister, Jr., June 19, 1787)

But I'm different now than i was then. Just like I was different at the end of the trip than I'd been at the beginning. And I'll be different tomorrow than I am today. And what that means is that I can never replicate that trip. Even if I went to the same places and met the same people, it wouldn't be the same. My experience wouldn't be the same. To me, that's what traveling should be about. Meeting people, learning to not only appreciate a different culture, but really enjoy it like a local, following whatever impulse strikes you.