The Tourist Quotes

In an instant he became aware that the tourist was about to try his own peculiar brand of linguistics, which meant that he would speak loudly and slowly in his own language. ~ Terry Pratchett

She's kind of a walking poem, she's this perfect beauty ... but at the same time very deep, very smart. ~ Johnny Depp

Amsterdam has more than 150 canals and 1,250 bridges, but it never seems crowded, nor bent and bitter from fleecing the tourist. ~ Julie Burchill

The country of the tourist pamphlet always is another country, an embarrassing abstraction of the desirable that, thank God, does not exist on this planet, where there are always ants and bad smells and empty Coca-Cola bottles to keep the grubby finger-print of reality upon the beautiful. ~ Nadine Gordimer

Every photograph that is made whether by one who considers himself a professional, or by the tourist who points his snapshot camera and pushes a button, is a response to the exterior world, to something perceived outside himself by the person who operates the camera. ~ Eliot Porter

You don't understand!" screamed the tourist, above the terrible noise of the wingbeats. "All my life I've wanted to see dragons!"
"From the inside?" shouted Rincewind. "Shut up and ride! ~ Terry Pratchett

One of the pleas you get when you're talking to the tourist industry or the energy industry or the whoever is, 'Please, can we just have the same minister for longer than five minutes?' ~ David Cameron

Make us, Lord, in Chesterton's distinction, travelers instead of tourists. Where the tourist defines his day by the expectation of seeing certain things, give us the traveler's openness to seeing what You will reveal. ~ Brian Eshleman

There are two worlds: the world of the tourist and the world of everyone else. Often they're side by side. But the tourist doesn't actually see how people live. ~ Paul Theroux

The tourist travels in his own atmosphere like a snail in his shell and stands, as it were, on his own perambulating doorstep to look at the continents of the world. But if you discard all this, and sally forth with a leisurely and blank mind, there is no knowing what may not happen to you. ~ Freya Stark

The plane banked, and he pressed his face against the cold window. The ocean tilted up to meet him, its dark surface studded with points of light that looked like constellations, fallen stars. The tourist sitting next to him asked him what they were. Nathan explained that the bright lights marked the boundaries of the ocean cemeteries. The lights that were fainter were memory buoys. They were the equivalent of tombstones on land: they marked the actual graves. While he was talking he noticed scratch-marks on the water, hundreds of white gashes, and suddenly the captain's voice, crackling over the intercom, interrupted him. The ships they could see on the right side of the aircraft were returning from a rehearsal for the service of remembrance that was held on the ocean every year. Towards the end of the week, in case they hadn't realised, a unique festival was due to take place in Moon Beach. It was known as the Day of the Dead...

...When he was young, it had been one of the days he most looked forward to. Yvonne would come and stay, and she'd always bring a fish with her, a huge fish freshly caught on the ocean, and she'd gut it on the kitchen table. Fish should be eaten, she'd said, because fish were the guardians of the soul, and she was so powerful in her belief that nobody dared to disagree. He remembered how the fish lay gaping on its bed of newspaper, the flesh dark-red and subtly ribbed where it was split in half, and Yvonne with her sleeves rolled back and ~ Rupert Thomson

It made me realize how unimaginative I had always been about battered wives. Disaster creeps up, a tidal wave on the tourist beach. By the time you can see it, you are powerless or unable to resist it and it rolls you up and away. ~ Nicci French

At the Tourist Bureau they talk about the cooling trade winds that caress the shores of Puerto Rico every day and night of the year - but Nelson Otto was a man the trade winds never seemed to touch. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

He did not think of himself as a tourist; he was a traveler. The difference is partly one of time, he would explain. Whereas the tourist generally hurries back home at the end of a few weeks or months, the traveler, belonging no more to one place than to the next, moves slowly, over periods of years, from one part of the earth to another. ~ Paul Bowles

You see," the tourist went on, "you know that thing you do with seaweed?"
Bethan, brought up on the Vortex Plains, had only heard of the sea in stories, and had decided she didn't like it. She looked blank.
"Eat it?"
"No, what you do is, you hang it up outside your door, and it tells you if it's going to rain."
Another thing Bethan had learned was that there was no real point in trying to understand anything Twoflower said, and that all anyone could do was run alongside the conversation and hope to jump on it as it turned a corner.
"I see," she said.
"Rincewind is like that, you see."
"Like seaweed."
"Yes. If there was anything at all to be frightened about, he'd be frightened. But he's not. The star is just about the only thing I've ever seen him not frightened of. If he's not worried, then take it from me, there's nothing to be worried about."
"It's not going to rain?" said Bethan.
"Well, no, metaphorically speaking."
"Oh." Bethan decided not to ask what "metaphorically" meant, in case it had something to do with seaweed. ~ Terry Pratchett

They read their sports pages, know their statistics and either root like hell or boo our butts off. I love it. Give me vocal fans, pro or con, over the tourist types who show up in Houston or Montreal and just sit there. ~ Mike Schmidt

Daddy, Momma! I made a friend. His name is Ike, and he ain't got no tail because they chopped it off, but Aidan didn't cop it off. Tourists chopped it off. But then Aiden went and fought the tourist. I hope we don't get no tourists here. We would have to hide all the dogs. ~ Sophie Oak

The Tourist Office would put it back up again before somebody noticed and didn't come to Deanna for a holiday on the white sandy beaches, where they could watch little marsupial Braking Dolphins swimming backwards through the tour boats' propeller in the strong current, or to blow up Cocka Snoek in the Whatoosie River with a little help from the Skeggs Valley Dynamite Fishing Club. ~ Christina Engela

The tourist may complain of other tourists, but he would be lost without them. ~ Agnes Repplier

The distinction often seems precarious. Both traveler and tourist are, by definition, separate from their environment. We like to think that the role we aspire to, the traveler, has that distance on the scene that implies vision and understanding, while the tourist suffers the alienation of the passive viewer, the "sightseer." At its worst, tourism is felt to represent a moral or spiritual failing. And in our hear we fear that we, too, are tourists. ~ Richard Todd

Now, during the tourist season, she first tries to speed the sale of an item that has been difficult to move by increasing its price substantially. ~ Robert B. Cialdini

The tourist debauches the great monuments of antiquity, a comic figure, always inapt in his comments, incongruous in his appearance; ... avarice and deceit attack him at every step; the shops that he patronizes are full of forgeries ... But we need feel no scruple or twinge of uncertainty; 'we' are travelers and cosmopolitans; the tourist is the other fellow. ~ Evelyn Waugh

I remember clearly the afternoon that she stood at the corner beside the door of the tourist centre in Gdansk. ~ You Jin

David Attenborough has said that Bali is the most beautiful place in the world, but he must have been there longer than we were, and seen different bits, because most of what we saw in the couple of days we were there sorting out our travel arrangements was awful. It was just the tourist area, i.e., that part of Bali which has been made almost exactly the same as everywhere else in the world for the sake of people who have come all this way to see Bali. ~ Douglas Adams

B'gwus is famous because of his wide range of homes. In some places, he's called Bigfoot. In other places, he's Yeti, or the Abominable Snowman, or Sasquatch. To most people, he is the equivalent of the Loch Ness monster, something silly to bring the tourist in. His image is even used to sell beer, and he is portrayed as a laid-back kind of guy, lounging on mountaintops in patio chairs, cracking open a frosty one. ~ Eden Robinson

After I graduated from college, while traveling around Europe, hitchhiking, doing the tourist thing, I went into a church in Dublin. ~ Frederica Mathewes-Green

Traveling for modeling has been great, but I never really have much time to live the tourist life while in all the different cities. ~ Rila Fukushima

What I'm getting at is like the distinction between tourist and a traveler. The tourist experience is superficial and glancing. The traveler develops a deeper connection with her surroundings. She is more invested in them
the traveler stays longer, makes her own plans, chooses her own destination, and usually travels alone: solo travel and solo participation, although the most difficult emotionally, seem the most likely to produce a good story. ~ Ted Conover

To all accusations of excessive development the administrators can reply, as they will if pressed hard enough, that they are giving the public what it wants, that their primary duty is to serve the public not preserve the wilds. "Parks are for people" is the public relations slogan, which decoded means that the parks are for people-in-automobiles. Behind the slogan is the assumption that the majority of Americans, exactly like the managers of the tourist industry, expect and demand to see their national parks from the comfort, security and convenience of their automobiles.
Is this assumption correct? Perhaps. Does that justify the continued and increasing erosion of the parks? It does not. ~ Edward Abbey

Everywhere on the Continent, the tourist is looked upon as a bird to be plucked, and presently the bird himself feebly comes to regard plucking as his proper destiny and abjectly holds out his wing so long as there is a feather left on it. ~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Oh yes, and compulsory ferret-legging down the pub on Tuesday evenings, for the tourist trade tha' knows." "Ferret-legging?" Rachel looked at him incredulously. "Yup. You tie your kilt up around your knees with duct tape - as you probably know, no Yorkshireman would be seen dead wearing anything under his sporran - and take a ferret by the scruff of his neck. A ferret, that's like, uh, a bit like a mink. Only less friendly. It's a young man's initiation rite; you stick the ferret where the sun doesn't shine and dance the furry dance to the tune of a balalaika. Last man standing and all that, kind of like the ancient Boer aardvark-kissing competition." Martin shuddered dramatically. "I hate ferrets. The bloody things bite like a cask-strength single malt without the nice after-effects. ~ Charles Stross

Without balance, a life is no longer worth the effort. ~ Olen Steinhauer

To the tourist, travel is a means to an end; to the traveler, it's an end in itself. ~ Marty Rubin

When we told our guide that we didn't want to go to all the tourist places he took us instead to the places where they take tourists who say that they don't want to go to tourist places. These places are, of course, full of tourists. ~ Douglas Adams

Peridots and periwinkle blue medallions
Gilded galleons spilled across the ocean floor
Treasure somewhere in the sea and he will find where
Never mind the questions there's no answer for
The roll of the harbor wake
The songs that the rigging makes
The taste of the spray he takes
And he learns to give
He aches and he learns to live
He stakes all his silver
On a promise to be free
Mermaids live in colonies
All his sea dreams come to me

City satins left at home I will not need them
I believe him when he tells of loving me
Something truthful in the sea all lies will find you
Leave behind your streets he said and come to me
Come down from the neon lights
Come down from the tourist sights
Run down till the rain delights
You do not hide
Sunlight will renew your pride
Skin white by skin golden
Like a promise to be free
Dolphins playing in the sea
All his sea dreams come to me

Seabird I have seen you fly above the pilings
I am smiling at your circles in the air
I will come and sit by you while he lies sleeping
Fold your fleet wings I have brought some dreams to share
A dream that you love someone
A dream that the wars are done
A dream that you tell no one but the gray sea
They'll say that you're crazy
And a dream of a baby
Like a promise to be free
Children laughing out to sea
All his sea dr ~ Joni Mitchell

The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes 'sight-seeing.' ~ Daniel J. Boorstin

Egypt needs law and order in Sinai to save the tourist industry in Sharm el-Sheik and prevent the area from becoming a base for terrorists that will target Egypt itself, as well as Jordan and Israel. ~ Elliott Abrams

Frank had turned into a giant eagle to fly to Delos, but Leo hitched a ride with Hazel on Arion's back. No offense to Frank, but after the fiasco at Fort Sumter, Leo had become a conscientious objector to riding giant eagles. He had a one hundred percent failure rate. They found the island deserted, maybe because the seas were too choppy for the tourist boats. The windswept hills were barren except for rocks, grass, and wildflowers - and, of course, a bunch of crumbling temples. The rubble was probably very impressive, but ever since Olympia, Leo had been on ancient ruins overload. He was so done with white marble columns. He wanted to get back to the U.S., where the oldest buildings were the public schools and Ye Olde McDonald's. ~ Rick Riordan

I am the twentieth century. I am the ragtime and the tango; sans-serif, clean geometry. I am the virgin's-hair whip and the cunningly detailed shackles of decadent passion. I am every lonely railway station in every capital of Europe. I am the Street, the fanciless buildings of government. the cafe-dansant, the clockwork figure, the jazz saxophone, the tourist-lady's hairpiece, the fairy's rubber breasts, the travelling clock which always tells the wrong time and chimes in different keys. I am the dead palm tree, the Negro's dancing pumps, the dried fountain after tourist season. I am all the appurtenances of night. ~ Thomas Pynchon

In a few months I was a seasoned guide. I had viewed myself as an amateur guide and a professional shopman, but now gradually I began to think of myself as a part-time shop-keeper and a full-time tourist guide. ~ R.K. Narayan

You're a tourist in sexual perversion. I'm a prisoner there. ~ Louis C.K.

I miss my family, and I like being a tourist when I go back. ~ Tim Roth

We Almost Become a Norwegian Tourist Attraction ~ Rick Riordan

Terri and her mother arrived. She was obviously a dedicated stage mother because she was loaded down with camera equipment, looking like a Japanese tourist. ~ Audrey Meadows

When I'd go to Israel, I felt like a tourist. My social and professional ties had started to dissolve, and it confused me. I didn't know whether I should stay here in Paris or go back to Israel, or even cut off all my ties with Israel so I could really plant roots here. Or maybe go somewhere else altogether. ~ Yael Naim

Gloucester's not some chi-chi tourist town. It's a working-class seaport: a no-kidding-around down-and-dirty place. ~ Israel Horovitz

When a woman grabs my braids and says "How cute!" I crab her breast and say "How cute!" She never touches me again! ~ Russell Means

Our relationship with Nature ... best way of forging this relationship ... be a pilgrim and not a tourist on Planet Earth ~ Satish Kumar

What if he thinks I'm a tourist girl looking for some romantics long distance love affair just so she can share his gushing, beach-stained postcards with her friends? ~ Sarah Ockler

Nobody goes into a Zen monastery as a tourist. ~ Leonard Cohen

Camels are still trained in Alice Springs for tourist jaunts and for occasional sale to Australia's zoos. ~ Robyn Davidson

I don't mind being a tourist at all, and a gawker. I just walk around. ~ Ann Robinson

Three Pines wasn't on any tourist map, being too far off any main or even secondary road. Like Narnia, it was generally found unexpectedly and with a degree of surprise that such an elderly village should have been hiding in this valley all along. Anyone fortunate enough to find it once usually found their way back. ~ Louise Penny

It makes a difference how you feel on this planet Earth: a citizen, a temporary tourist, or an exotic cast-away. ~ Talismanist Giebra

China is one of those vast, continental conglomerates that ... I mean, if they were to start a tourist trade in China, they'd just bus people in from another province, you know what I mean? They're very self-contained. ~ Damon Albarn

A tourist is a fellow who drives thousands of miles so he can be photographed standing in front of his car. ~ Emile Genest

You've always been a tourist here. You just didn't know it. ~ Khaled Hosseini

Move to a new country and you quickly see that visiting a place as a tourist, and actually moving there for good, are two very different things. ~ Tahir Shah

He was a privileged tourist in a primitive country: flatteringly curious, unknowingly insulting, quite certainly unable to survive if left to his own devices. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

A tourist will come drawn to its beautiful past but we need to put efforts for creating systems to make them stay here. ~ Narendra Modi

Being shaken to death by a Hawaiian tourist look-alike was not how Arena imagined her death. ~ Lynn Blackmar

I'm being haunted," she blurted out.
"My dear," he cooed. "Turn yourself into a tourist attraction and charge admission. ~ Peter Straub

I'd rather be at Wragby, where I can go about and be still, and not stare at anything or do any performing of any sort. This tourist performance of enjoying oneself is too hopelessly humiliating: it's such a failure. ~ D.H. Lawrence

I'm not a good tourist, I don't like tourism. ~ Joe Sacco

And you definitely shouldn't attempt to drive yourself in Miami, because odds are you'd make some foolish tourist mistake such as stop for a red light, which means you'd be rear-ended by a vehicle going upwards of eighty miles per hour driven by a motorist with no insurance but a minimum of two firearms. ~ Dave Barry

You know, if I were a negative person, I would be seriously annoyed right now. (Talon)
You sound annoyed to me. (Wulf)
No, this isn't annoyed. This is mild perturbance. Besides, you should see these guys. 'Hey, Gorgeous George, I think I smell a Dark-Hunter.' 'Oh no, Dick, don't be a dick. There's no Dark-Hunter here.' 'I dunno…' 'Wait, I smell tourist. Tourist with big…strong soul.' (Talon)
Would you stop? (Wulf)
Talk about inkblots. (Talon) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Everyone, even Kai, looks like a tourist in a snorkel mask. And maybe we are all tourists in this underwater world - snorkels are our temporary visas, allowing us to visit this mysterious country for brief slices of time. ~ Dallas Woodburn

Every time, every time a tourist or an immigrant or a refugee shows up in another country there's a security risk. ~ Justin Trudeau

You might be a redneck if your beer can collection is considered a tourist attraction in your home town. ~ Jeff Foxworthy

Why is it called tourist season if we can't shoot at them? ~ George Carlin

I don't look down on tourism. I live in Hawaii where we have 7 million visitors a year. If they weren't there, there would be no economy. So I understand why a tourist economy is necessary. ~ Paul Theroux

More understand China, then more people will have interest in China and more people will come to China to visit us because I am a tourist ambassador. ~ Jackie Chan

When you make a movie it's always interesting, because you end up in places you never would as a normal visitor or tourist. ~ Denzel Washington

A tourist is an ugly human being ~ Jamaica Kincaid

I'm not really a tourist attraction kind of guy. ~ Josh Hartnett

It was so bad, it was worth more than we paid. ~ Bill Bryson

If its tourist season, why cant we shoot them ~ Steven Wright