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Other than to amuse himself, why should a man pretend to know where he's going or understand what he sees?

William Least Heat-Moon

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William Least Heat-Moon
Age: 85
Born: 1939
Born: August 27
Historian
Writer
Kansas City
Missouri
Amuse
Pretend
Sees
Understand
Going
Men

More quotes by William Least Heat-Moon

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The thing that overwhelms me when I go out now is the sprawlation of America.
William Least Heat-Moon
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On the old highway maps of America, the main routes were red and the back roads blue. Now even the colors are changing.
William Least Heat-Moon
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Be careful going in search of adventure - it's ridiculously easy to find.
William Least Heat-Moon
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The negative cost of Lewis and Clark entering the Garden of Eden is that later expeditions regardless of what they were intended to do, later expeditions did not deal with the native peoples with the intelligence with the almost kindly resolve that Lewis and Clark did.
William Least Heat-Moon
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No yesterdays on the road.
William Least Heat-Moon
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I like the digressive kind of traveling, where there's not a particular, set, goal.
William Least Heat-Moon
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One of the sweet and expectable aspects of life afloat is the perpetual present moment one lives in and a perception that time is nothing more than the current, an eternal flowing back to the sea.
William Least Heat-Moon
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The four horsemen of the prairie are tornado, locust, drought, and fire, and the greatest of these is fire, a rider with two faces because for everything taken, it makes a return in equal measure.
William Least Heat-Moon
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Beware thoughts that come in the night.
William Least Heat-Moon
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I contend that in the kind of nonfiction I write, and that other people also pursue, anything is permissible provided the reader knows what you're taking liberties with.
William Least Heat-Moon
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A true journey, no matter how long the travel takes, has no end.
William Least Heat-Moon
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A man who couldn't make things go right could at least go. He could quit trying to get out of the way of life. Chuck routine. Live the real jeopardy of circumstance. It was a question of dignity.
William Least Heat-Moon
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Without the errors, wrong turns and blind alleys, without the doubling back and misdirection and fumbling and chance discoveries, there was not one bit of joy in walking the labyrinth.
William Least Heat-Moon
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Franchises and chains have come to dominate small communities, but those same chains have eliminated a lot of the greasy spoons, places you didn't want to eat in the first place.
William Least Heat-Moon
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Instead of insight, maybe all a man gets is strength to wander for a while.
William Least Heat-Moon
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Life doesn't happen along interstates. It's against the law.
William Least Heat-Moon
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Having made the trip from St. Louis to the Pacific Ocean myself going up up up against twenty-five hundred miles of the Missouri River, I can testify that it's one of the most arduous trips that anyone can make on this continent and yet I had a power boat to do it in.
William Least Heat-Moon
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At the beginning we learn to travel, then we travel to learn.
William Least Heat-Moon
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You never feel better than when you start feeling good after you've been feeling bad.
William Least Heat-Moon
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I have not been on any river that has more of a distinctive personality than does the Missouri River. It's a river that immediately presents to the traveler, 'I am a grandfather spirit. I have a source I have a life.
William Least Heat-Moon