“Your picture-perfect postcard beach doesn’t move me. What I want is to come alive when I see you. I want to feel like I am seventeen again, and I am swinging on a rope swing under an old elm, and you are teasing me about my dress, and the light is hitting your hair, and you smile back at me like maybe I could be the one, and I manage to say something witty, and you laugh—and oh, your laugh is the closest I’ve ever been to god—and every good sense I have is lost in this moment, in this tiny razor-thin sliver of time, when you and I are human poetry, and dandelion cotton balls blow across the wind, and the sun starts to set, and we both look at one another and think things that neither of us will ever say, but will feel for the rest of our lives, every time we pass the park on Church Street, and remember how it felt, to be free. This is why you travel.”
Ash Ambirge
“Peak experiences are fun, but you always have to come back. Learning to appreciate ordinary moments is the key to a fulfilling life.”
Cory Muscara, Twitter
19 Quotes from Narrow Road To The Interior on Solitude, Travel, and Poetry
Excerpt: These quotes from Narrow Road To The Interior capture a beauty in what’s seemingly plain that’ll elevate your perspective for better living.
Read More »19 Quotes from Narrow Road To The Interior on Solitude, Travel, and Poetry
“The Kiso road was dangerous, winding over several steep mountain passes. Much as we tried to help one another, our inexperience showed. There were many mistakes. Nervous and worried, we made mistakes, but learning to laugh at them gave us courage to continue.”
Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 89)
“Each twist in the road brought new sights, each dawn renewed my inspiration. Wherever I met another person with even the least appreciation for artistic excellence, I was overcome with joy. Even those I’d expected to be stubbornly old-fashioned often proved to be good companions. People often say that the greatest pleasures of traveling are finding a sage hidden behind weeds or treasures hidden in trash, gold among discarded pottery. Whenever I encountered someone of genius, I wrote about it in order to tell my friends.”
Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 81)
“With every pilgrimage one encounters the temporality of life. To die along the road is destiny. Or so I told myself.”
Bashō, Narrow Road To The Interior (Page 14)
Narrow Road To The Interior [Book]
Book Overview: A masterful translation of one of the most-loved classics of Japanese literature—part travelogue, part haiku collection, part account of spiritual awakening
Bashō (1644–1694)—a great luminary of Asian literature who elevated the haiku to an art form of utter simplicity and intense spiritual beauty—is renowned in the West as the author of Narrow Road to the Interior, a travel diary of linked prose and haiku recounting his journey through the far northern provinces of Japan.
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19 Quotes from Narrow Road To The Interior on Solitude, Travel, and Poetry
“[Rich] has a theory: When we travel, we actually take three trips. There’s the first trip of preparation and anticipation, packing and daydreaming. There’s the trip you’re actually on. And then, there’s the trip you remember. ‘The key is to try to keep all three as separate as possible,’ he says. ‘The key is to be present wherever you are right now.'”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 303)
“Odd things happen when you’re on a road trip alone. The monotony of driving becomes meditative: The mind unwrinkles. As the usual anxieties and concerns vacate, daydreams flit in. Occasionally, a wisp of an idea appears out of nowhere only to recede, a shimmery mirage in a desert. Other times, an avalanche of memories tumbles forth, loosened by an old song on the radio or a deja vu—inducing landscape. The interplay between geography and memory becomes a conversation. They spark and spur each other.”
Suleika Jaouad, Between Two Kingdoms (Page 244)