Open Road Quotes

1. "Once Mamaw's eased her body onto the seat, pinning me in so tightly that a seat belt would just be redundant, we head out of the parking lot and onto the open road. Mamaw and Papaw have agreed to take me shopping for Mackenzie's birthday present, and we're heading out to The Square at the breakneck speed of thirty-four miles per hour."Slow down, Frank," my mamaw commands, patting my knee. "We've got precious cargo."He eases up on the gas and I throw my head back and close my eyes, anxious and frustrated."
Author: Alecia Whitaker

2. "And while he waited in the castle court,The voice of Enid, Yniol's daughter, rangClear through the open casement of the hall,Singing; and as the sweet voice of a bird,Heard by the lander in a lonely isle,Moves him to think what kind of bird it isThat sings so delicately clear, and makeConjecture of the plumage and the form;So the sweet voice of Enid moved Geraint;And made him like a man abroad at mornWhen first the liquid note beloved of menComes flying over many a windy waveTo Britain, and in April suddenlyBreaks from a coppice gemmed with green and red,And he suspends his converse with a friend,Or it may be the labour of his hands,To think or say, 'There is the nightingale;'So fared it with Geraint, who thought and said,'Here, by God's grace, is the one voice for me."
Author: Alfred Tennyson

3. "He had the radio turned to some Spanish-language station at a volume that reminded me of the holding tank at Riker's Island - and for an added touch of authenticity he screamed 'Maricon!' and waved his fist out the open window at another driver who had the audacity to attempt to share the road with us."
Author: Andrew Vachss

4. "Along the open road on winter nights, homeless, cold, and hungry, one voice gripped my frozen heart: 'Weakness or strength: you exist, that is strength. You don't know where you are going or why you are going, go in everywhere, answer everyone. No one will kill you, any more than if you were a corpse.' In the morning my eyes were so vacant and my face so dead, that the people I met may not even have seen me.In cities, mud went suddenly red and black, like a mirror when a lamp in the next room moves, like treasure in the forest! Good luck, I cried, and I saw a sea of flames and smoke rise to heaven; and left and right, all wealth exploded like a billion thunderbolts."
Author: Arthur Rimbaud

5. "Taylor and Niall are watching their personal assistant prospects waiting to be interviewed."Leave them sitting there until one of them shows some initiative." Niall said.Ten minutes ticked slowly by."I give in," Niall said. "They're all idiots."Taylor laughed. "I'm intrigued now. How long are they going to sit there?""I suspect until they drop dead."Five more minutes before Taylor heard Niall exhale in frustration, and then the door of the living room flew open and a chicken burst in."What the f**k?" Taylor gasped."Hi, everyone," the chicken said in a perky voice. "Thank goodness, I'm not too late. I had difficulty getting across the road." She laughed and then sighed when no one else joined in. They sat staring at her in mute shock."
Author: Barbara Elsborg

6. "Spring flew swiftly by, and summer came; and if the village had been beautiful at first, it was now in the full glow and luxuriance of its richness. The great trees, which had looked shrunken and bare in the earlier months, had now burst into strong life and health; and stretching forth their green arms over the thirsty ground, converted open and naked spots into choice nooks, where was a deep and pleasant shade from which to look upon the wide prospect, steeped in sunshine, which lay stretched out beyond. The earth had donned her mantle of brightest green; and shed her richest perfumes abroad. It was the prime and vigour of the year; all things were glad and flourishing."
Author: Charles Dickens

7. "With the land and possession of America rapidly passing into the hands of a favored few; with great corporations taking the place of individual effort; with the small shops going down before the great factories and department stores; with thousands of men and women in idleness and want; with wages constantly tending to a lower level; ... with bribery and corruption openly charged, constantly reiterated by the press, and universally believed; and above all and more than all, with theknowledge that the servants of the people, elected to correct abuses,are bought and sold in legislative halls at the bidding of corporations and individuals: with all these notorious evils sapping the foundations of popular government and destroying personal liberty, some rude awakening must come. And if it shall come, ... when you then look abroad over the ruin and desolation, remember the long years in which the storm was rising, and do not blame the thunderbolt."
Author: Clarence Darrow

8. "He released her with obvious reluctance and shoved open his door, then came around to open her door. His chivalry brought an even broader smile. "Bet this doesn't last long", she teased. He took her hand. "You keep waiting for me to open it, and I will keep coming around."
Author: Colleen Coble

9. "The house was quiet. Silently, I walked down the stairs and passed the peacock room where I found Mr. Kadam sitting and waiting for me. He took my bag and walked with me out to the car, then he opened my door, and I slid in to the seat and buckled my seatbelt. Starting the car, he circled the stone driveway slowly. I turned to take one last look at the beautiful place that felt like home. As we started down the tree-lined road, I watched the house until the trees blocked my view.Just then, a deafening, heartrending roar shook the trees. I turned in my seat and faced the desolate road ahead."
Author: Colleen Houck

10. "He rode out in the dark long before daylight and he rode the sun up and he rode it down again. In the oncoming years a terrible drought struck west Texas. He moved on. There was no work in that country anywhere. Pasture gates stood open and sand drifted in the roads and after a few years it was rare to see stock of any kind and he rode on. Days of the world. Years of the world. Till he was old."
Author: Cormac McCarthy

11. "Even at the end of the road, read the first sentence, there is a road. Even at the end of the road, a new road stretches out, endless and open, a road that may lead anywhere. To him who will find it, there is always a road."
Author: D.J. MacHale

12. "Southly thru shrubby heath we tromped now till we got to wideway. Wideway I'd heard o' from storymen an' here it was, an open, long, flat o' roadstone. SAplin's'n'bush was musclin' up but wondersome'n'wild was that windy space."
Author: David Mitchell

13. "The one thing I miss is hitchhiking. Now there's no more of that. When's the last time you saw a hitchhiker? It's not that I consider it a great sport, but it was my way of seeing the country. The open road, especially in the western United States, is still very pristine, but everything else around it has changed."
Author: Edward Ruscha

14. "I Won't Fly TodayToo much to do, despite the snow,which made all local schools closetheir doors. What a winter! Usually,I love watching the white stuff fall.But after a month with only shortrespites, I keep hoping for a criticalblue sky. Instead, amazing wavesof silvery clouds sweep over the crestof the Sierra, open their obesebellies, and release foot upon footof crisp new powder. The skiresorts would be happy, exceptthe roads are so hard to travelthat people are staying home.So it kind of boggles the mindthat three guys are laying carpetin the living room. Just goes toshow the power of money. In lessthan an hour, the stain Conner lefton the hardwood will be a ghost."
Author: Ellen Hopkins

15. "Dick tried to rest - the struggle would come presently at home and he might have to sit a long time, restating the universe for her. A "schizophrêne" is well named as a split personality - Nicole was alternately a person to whom nothing need be explained and one to whom nothing could be explained. It was necessary to treat her with active and affirmative insistence, keeping the road to reality always open, making the road to escape harder going. But the brilliance, the versatility of madness is akin to the resourcefulness of water seeping through, over and around a dike. It requires the united front of many people to work against it."
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

16. "She opened her curtains, and looked out towards the bit of road that lay in view, with fields beyond outside the entrance-gates. On the road there was a man with a bundle on his back and a woman carrying her baby; in the field she could see figures moving - perhaps the shepherd with his dog. Far off in the bending sky was the pearly light; and she felt the largeness of the world and the manifold wakings of men to labor and endurance. She was a part of that involuntary, palpitating life, and could neither look out on it from her luxurious shelter as a mere spectator, nor hide her eyes in selfish complaining."
Author: George Eliot

17. "Reading is not as insignificant as we claim. First we must steal the key to the library. Reading is a provocation, a rebellion: we open the book's door, pretending it is a simple paperback cover, and in broad daylight escape! We are no longer there: this is what real reading is. If we haven't left the room, if we haven't gone over the wall, we're not reading."
Author: Hélène Cixous

18. "Darn! what a beautiful night! Heading towards Pandara Road-Gulati Restaurant, with open windows of my baby sedan and this broad chest guy with big brown eyes.He hums the oldies well and his Issey Miyake is making me lose the grip over my senses.One more thing is distracting me, he ain't wearing anything inside but a transparent white, V necked, cotton short Kurta.I can see the hair winking out and his collar bones!!Not only men get excited by transparent dresses but women as well.His broad shoulders and chest is my weakness and he knows it.This man is not doing good to me!It's a crime to seduce in this way, when you are not touched, when you are distracted by the aroma of his skin, when you know, he is well aware of the intentions..when you can't do anything except getting seduced by the corner stretching smile of a man with animal instinct..I certainly am missing myself to be tied up to the bedpost,choked and groaning his name!"
Author: Himmilicious

19. "A subject to which few intellectuals ever give a thought is the right to be a vagrant, the freedom to wander. Yet vagrancy is a deliverance, and life on the open road is the essence of freedom. To have the courage to smash the chains with which modern life has weighted us (under the pretext that it was offering us more liberty), then to take up the symbolic stick and bundle and get out."
Author: Isabelle Eberhardt

20. "But that will leave no place for us!' cried Pippin in dismay. ‘We don't want to be left behind. We want to go with Frodo.' ‘That is because you do not understand and cannot imagine what lies ahead,' said Elrond. ‘Neither does Frodo,' said Gandalf, unexpectedly supporting Pippin. "Nor do any of us see clearly. It is true that if these hobbits understood the danger, they would not dare to go. But they would still wish to go, or wish that they dared, and be shamed and unhappy. I think, Elrond, that in this matter it would be well to trust rather to their friendship than to great wisdom. Even if you chose for us an elf-lord, such as Glorfindel, he could not storm the Dark Tower, nor open the road to the Fire by the power that is in him."
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

21. "The morning of that day, as Gabriel rose and started out to work, the sky was low and nearly black and the air too thick to breath. Late in the afternoon the wind rose, the skies opened, and the rain came. The rain came down as though once more in Heaven the Lord had been persuaded of the good uses of a flood. It drove before it the bowed wanderer, clapped children into houses, licked with fearful anger against the high, strong wall, and the wall of the lean-to, and the wall of the cabin, beat against the bark and the leaves of trees, trampled the broad grass, and broke the neck of the flower. The world turned dark, forever, everywhere, and windows ran as though their glass panes bore all the tears of eternity, threatening at every instant to shatter inward against this force, uncontrollable, so abruptly visited on the earth."
Author: James Baldwin

22. "Books are what you step on to take you to a higher shelf. The higher your stack of books, the higher the shelf you can reach. Want to reach higher? Stack some more books under your feet! Reading is what brings us to new knowledge. It opens new doors. It helps us understand mysteries. It lets us hear from successful people. Reading is what takes us down the road in our journey. Everything you need for a better future and success has already been written."
Author: Jim Rohn

23. "Shamash grant your wish.What your mouth has said, may your eyes see.May he open for you the barred path,unclose the road for your footsteps,unlock the mountain for your foot.May the night give you things that please you,and may Lugalbanda stand beside youand satisfy your wish.May you be granted your wish as a child is."
Author: John Gardner

24. "Honest, open communication is the only street that leads us into the real world... We then begin to grow as never before. And once we are on this road, happiness cannot be far away."
Author: John Powell

25. "An opening statement is like a guide or a road map. It's a very delicate thing."
Author: Johnnie Cochran

26. "You Learn"After a while you learn the subtle differenceBetween holding a hand and chaining a soul,And you learn that love doesn't mean leaningAnd company doesn't mean security.And you begin to learn that kisses aren't contractsAnd presents aren't promises,And you begin to accept your defeatsWith your head up and your eyes openWith the grace of a woman, not the grief of a child,And you learn to build all your roads on todayBecause tomorrow's ground is too uncertain for plansAnd futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.After a while you learn…That even sunshine burns if you get too much.So you plant your garden and decorate your own soul,Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.And you learn that you really can endure…That you really are strongAnd you really do have worth…And you learn and learn…With every good-bye you learn."
Author: Jorge Luis Borges

27. "Say to a blind man, you're free, open the door that was separating him from the world, Go, you are free, we tell him once more, and he does not go, he has remained motionless there in the middle of the road, he and the others, they are terrified, they do not know where to go, the fact is that there is no comparison between living in a rational labyrinth, which is, by definition, a mental asylum and venturing forth, without a guiding hand or a dog-leash, into the demented labyrinth of the city, where memory will serve no purpose, for it will merely be able to recall the images of places but not the paths whereby we might get there."
Author: José Saramago

28. "For anyone to open their heart, they need the right atmosphere, and something to prompt them. For my mother it was her trip abroad: she was in a very relaxed, understanding environment. I was very sympathetic towards her."
Author: Jung Chang

29. "Cycling is a sport of the open road and spectators are lining that road."
Author: Lance Armstrong

30. "Her head started to spin. She chewed the inside of her mouth. Sweat trickled between her breasts and down her back. Ignoring a fly buzzing around her face, she crossed her arms. "Aw, hell, Hank Gallagher, you've got no time for me." Hank dropped his stupid action-hero glasses, and his chapped lips twisted. "I'll admit your attitude sucks, but you and Gypsy are due for a helluva season, Daisy Mae. I'd hate for you to miss the opener. There won't be another rig comin' this way headin' for Willow Springs, y'know." Daisy stood stock still. Her mouth felt dry. Hank spit impatiently, and a stream of tobacco juice hit the dusty yellow road. Daisy stared hard at that dark stain, trying to keep her head clear. "Can I take the ride and keep on hating you?"
Author: Lilly Christine

31. "The Open Road goes to the used-car lot."
Author: Louis Simpson

32. "It's been open about a year now.And it is one of my favorite places in the city.""You never told me," he said, sounding surprised."So even after all these years,we can still surprise one another," she teased.He leaned over and kissed her quickly on the cheek. "Even after all these years," he said. "So enlighten me-how often do you come to this place?""Five,maybe six times a week.""Oh?""Every morning when I'd leave the shop,I'd usually walk down to the Embarcadero,amble along the promenade and end up walking the length of this pier.Where did you think I was for that hour?""I thought you'd popped across the road for coffee.""Yea,Nicholas," Perenelle said in French. "I drink tea. You know I hate coffee.""You hate coffee?" Nicholas said. "Since when?""Only for the last eighty years or so."Nicholas blinked,pale eyes reflecting the blue of the sea. "I knew that.I think.""You're teasing me.""Maybe," he admitted."
Author: Michael Scott

33. "Confined on the ship, from which there is no escape, the madman is delivered to the river with its thousand arms, the sea with its thousand roads, to that great uncertainty external to everything. He is a prisoner in the midst of what is the freest, the openest of routes: bound fast at the infinite crossroads. He is the Passenger par excellence: that is, the prisoner of the passage. And the land he will come to is unknown—as is, once he disembarks, the land from which he comes. He has his truth and his homeland only in that fruitless expanse between two countries that cannot belong to him."
Author: Michel Foucault

34. "I'm more than open to hope, but I think men and women have a difficult time dealing with each other and often take the low road."
Author: Neil LaBute

35. "(2002) In Rome, month upon month, I struggled with how to structure the book about my father (He already had the water, he just had to discover jars). At one point I laid each chapter out on the terrazzo floor, eighty-three in all, arranged them like the map of an imaginary city. Some of the piles of paper, I imagined, were freestanding buildings, some were clustered into neighborhoods, and some were open space. On the outskirts, of course, were the tenements--abandoned, ramshackled. The spaces between the piles were the roads, the alleyways, the footpaths, the rivers. The bridges to other neighborhoods, the bridges out...In this way I could get a sense if one could find their way through the book, if the map I was creating made sense, if it was a place one would want to spend some time in. If one could wander there, if one could get lost."
Author: Nick Flynn

36. "Cocky much?" I muttered, hanging my arm out the window like Jesse was. I opened my hand and splayed my fingers to feel the wind rushing through them."Only when a pretty girl is sitting next to me and trying her hardest to pretend I'm the most irritating thing in the world," he replied, staring at the road and smiling."
Author: Nicole Williams

37. "Day one, the van broke down. It was so cold the accelerator cable froze, so when Tony [Iommi] put his foot down it snapped in half. Which meant we were stranded in the middle of f**king nowhere, halfway to Copenhagen. There was a blizzard outside, but Tony said it was my job – as the band's ‘public representative' – to go and find some help. So out I walked into this field, snow blowing into my face, two icicles of snot hanging out of my nose, until finally I saw the lights of a farmhouse up ahead. Then I fell into a trench. After finally pulling myself out of the f**king thing, I waded through the snow until I reached the front door, then knocked loudly.‘Halløj?' said the big, red-faced Eskimo bloke who opened the door.‘Oh, thank f**k,' I said.[...]‘Halløj?'I didn't know any Danish, so I pointed towards the road, and said, ‘Van. El kaputski. Ya?'"
Author: Ozzy Osbourne

38. "Esperanza leaned around the side of the truck. As they rounded a curve, it appeared as if the mountains pulled away from each other, like a curtain opening on stage, revealing the San Joaquin Valley beyond. Flat and spacious, it spread out like a blanket of patchwork fields. Esperanza could see no end to the plots of yellow, brown, and shades of green. The road finally leveled out on the valley floor, and she gazed back at the mountains from where they'd come. They looked like monstrous lions' paws resting at the edge of ridge."
Author: Pam Muñoz Ryan

39. "The untented Kosmos my abode,I pass, a wilful stranger:My mistress still the open roadAnd the bright eyes of danger."
Author: R.L.S.

40. "[...] the diversity of our opinions, consequently, does not arise from some being endowed with a larger share of reason than others, but solely from this, that we conduct our thoughts along different ways, and do not fix our attention on the same objects. For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it. The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellences, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations; and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it."
Author: René Descartes

41. "... no sensitive Christian can be satisfied with a distinction between righteousness and unrighteousness drawn only between communities, with each individual belonging unambiguously on one or the other side of the line. The behavior of "the righteous" is often very disappointing, while "the unrighteous" regularly perform in a manner that is much better than our theology might lead us to expect of them. Thus the need for a perspective that allows for both a rather slow process of sanctification in the Christian life and some sort of divine restraint on the power of sin in the unbelieving community. These theological adjustments to a religious perspective that might otherwise betray strong Manichean tones provide us with yet another reason for openness to a broad-ranging dialogue: Christians have good grounds for believing that their own weakness can be corrected by encountering the strengths of others."
Author: Richard J. Mouw

42. "The door, indeed, stood open as before; but the windows were still shuttered, the chimneys breathed no stain into the bright air, there sounded abroad none of that low stir (perhaps audible rather to the ear of the spirit than to the ear of the flesh) by which a house announces and betrays its human lodgers."
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

43. "Miles away, down through an opening in the hills, he could catch glimpses of a road where motor-cars sometimes passed, and yet here, so removed from the arteries of the latest civilization, was a bat-haunted old homestead, where something unmistakably like witchcraft seemed to hold a very practical sway."
Author: Saki

44. "Jai pointed at the car. "Get in the car. I'm pissed at you for getting out of it in the first place."Outrage lit through her. "Hey, I'm a big girl, I can make my own decisions.""Get in the car, Ari!" Charlie yelled now, his own eyes glittering with anger.Her mouth fell open, her cheeks blazing with indignation as the two men in her life stared at her, their expressions implacable. She made a 'pfft' sound and whirled around, stomping like a child towards the car."Too much testosterone, infuriating cavemen, need someone else to boss around, stupid jerks..." she kept muttering insults under her breath until Charlie and Jai had cleared the road."
Author: Samantha Young

45. "In an essay titled A View From the Front Line, Jencks described her experience with cancer as like being woken up midflight on a jumbo jet and then thrown out with a parachute into a foreign landscape without a map:"There you are, the future patient, quietly progressing with other passengers toward a distant destination when, astonishingly (Why me?) a large hole opens in the floor next to you. People in white coats appear, help you into a parachute and — no time to think — out you go."You descend. You hit the ground....But where is the enemy? What is the enemy? What is it up to?...No road. No compass. No map. No training. Is there something you should know and don't?"The white coats are far, far away, strapping others into their parachutes. Occasionally they wave but, even if you ask them, they don't know the answers. They are up there in the Jumbo, involved with parachutes, not map-making."
Author: Siddhartha Mukherjee

46. "A stupid person can make only certain, limited types of errors; the mistakes open to a clever fellow are far broader. But to the one who knows how smart he is compared to everyone else, the possibilities for true idiocy are boundless."
Author: Steven Brust

47. "I wanted to live, to take the open road before me."
Author: Vikki Wakefield

48. "The road now stretched across open country, and it occured to me - not by way of protest, not as a symbol, or anything like that, but merely as a novel experience - that since I had disregarded all laws of humanity, I might as well disregard the rules of traffic. So I crossed to the left side of the highway and checked the feeling, and the feeling was good. It was a pleasant diaphragmal melting, with elements of diffused tactility, all this enhanced by the thought that nothing could be nearer to the elimination of basic physical laws than deliberately driving on the wrong site of the road."
Author: Vladimir Nabokov

49. "Now understand me well--it is provided in the essence of things that from any fruition of success, no matter what, shall come forth something to make a greater struggle necessary. [from "Song of the Open Road"]"
Author: Walt Whitman

50. "Afoot and lighthearted I take to the open road, healthy, free, the world before me."
Author: Walt Whitman

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