Rachel Friedman Quotes

It's as difficult to describe the sea as it is a piece of music.

...being a weatherman in Ireland is about the biggest scam going.

That summer, maybe for the first time in my life, I existed wholly in the present moment, which is one of the liberating things about traveling to a place where no one knows you. I had no past or future, which suited me perfectly, since I did not wish to reckon with either.

Whispering voice inside my head growing louder, my voice - not those of my parents or teachers or Carly or Muriel, even - telling me to live my life without fear or worry or doubt that nothing was going according to plan, as though such a plan ever existed in the first place.

My mom says, "Just keep in mind when you're choosing a career - money doesn't solve everything, but it sure makes life easier." I

Who you are when you are tested might not be pretty, but it's always real.

Even the homes we leave on purpose, the families we break away from to be ourselves or someone else, call us back again and again, to a place that has long since ceased to be home yet still holds power over us.

What happens when we lose the things that anchor us? What if, instead of grasping at something to hold on to, we pull up our roots and walk away? Instead of trying to find the way back, we walk deeper and deeper into the woods, willing ourselves to get lost. In this place where nothing is recognizable. not the people or the language or the food, we are truly on our own. Eventually, we find ourselves unencumbered by the past or the future. Here is a fleeting glimpse of our truest self, our self in the present moment.

All along I've thought the best way to keep out all the voices in my head directing my life this way and that was to stay busy, to distract my brain from itself, but it's this profound silence that releases me from worry.

I imagine the people whose lives are most intertwined with mine, and I realize life has gone on without me. The planet has not imploded because I, the girl who has always done what is expected of her, decided not to, just this once.

These Aussie girls are free to set their own courses in the world, to meander and experiment. Their travels are not bumps along the road - they are life itself. See the world and then come home and decide who you want to be in it, not the other way around, as seems the general trajectory in the U.S.

Backpacking has noble ideals: to see how the locals live, to interact with them, to be respectful and blend in as much as possible. Backpackers want to learn, we want to understand the worlds we have entered, not simply consume them.

Should you do what you love, what's outrageous and unpredictable, and worry about the future later, or plug away at a steady job first and go off and have your fun when you retire? In

We are in love, in the very beginning part of it, when you don't ever want to separate your body from the other person's.

See the world and then come home and decide who you want to be in it,

I've found it freeing these last few months to let go of some insecurities, large and small, or at least to put them on hold. One

Even with the coffee, I'm never fully awake, just jittery.

Maybe this is what travel gives you - or gives you back, in most cases - that childlike sense of wonder, and with it a kidstyle openness where you want to finger-paint with anyone and everyone who shows