Explore Quotes by Jonathan Raban

At night, what you see is a city, because all you see is lights. By day, it doesn't look like a city at all. The trees out-number the houses. And that's completely typical of Seattle. You can't quite tell: is it a city, is it a suburb, is the forest growing back?

Travel. It was an intransitive verb. It didn't involve any destinations. It was going to the going's sake, to be anywhere but where you were, with motion itself as the only object.

Seattle is this curious liberal island.

Spells of acute loneliness are an essential part of travel. Loneliness makes things happen.

Books admitted me to their world open-handedly, as people for their most part, did not. The life I lived in books was one of ease and freedom, worldly wisdom, glitter, dash and style.

In an underdeveloped country don't drink the water. In a developed country don't breathe the air.

Over emphatic negatives always suggest that what is being denied may be what is really being asserted.

I ain't sleeping. I'm just taking a good look at the insides of my eyelids.