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Geoff Nicholson QUOTES

Geoff Nicholson QUOTES

1 " Again, I did what I could. I didn't doubt, and didn't deny, that there were people who could have done a better job than me, people with more skill and experience, but I played the hand I was given, dealt with the problem, and the person, in front of me, and at least I felt reasonably sure I was doing no harm. "

― Geoff Nicholson , The Miranda

2 " A lot of people measure a man by what he's got. I've decided to measure myself by what I can give up. "

― Geoff Nicholson , Hunters and Gatherers

3 " Walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the same street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; nobody talking; silence in the yards; dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of wheels. "

― Geoff Nicholson , The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, and Literature of Pedestrianism

4 " It occurred to me, not exactly for the first time, that psychogeography didn't have much to do with the actual experience of walking. It was a nice idea, a clever idea, an art project, a conceit, but it had very little to do with any real walking, with any real experience of walking. And it confirmed for me what I'd really known all along, that walking isn't much good as a theoretical experience. You can dress it up any way you like, but walking remains resolutely simple, basic, analog. That's why I love it and love doing it. And in that respect--stay with me on this--it's not entirely unlike a martini. Sure you can add things to martinis, like chocolate or an olive stuffed with blue cheese or, God forbid, cotton candy, and similarly you can add things to your walks--constraints, shapes, notions of the mapping of utopian spaces--but you don't need to. And really, why would you? Why spoil a good drink? Why spoil a good walk? "

― Geoff Nicholson , The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, and Literature of Pedestrianism

5 " Modern literary theory sees a similarity between walking and writing that I find persuasive: words inscribe a text in the same way that a walk inscribes space. In The practicse of Everyday Life, Michel de Certeau writes, 'The act of walking is a process of appropriation of the topographical system on the part of the pedestrian; it is a special acting-out of the place...and it implies relations among differentiated positions.' I think this is a fancy way of saying that writing is one way of making the world our own, and that walking is another. "

― Geoff Nicholson , The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, and Literature of Pedestrianism

6 " Your own exploration therefore has to be personalized; you're doing it for yourself, increasing your own store of particular knowledge, walking your own eccentric version of the city. "

― Geoff Nicholson , The Lost Art of Walking: The History, Science, and Literature of Pedestrianism

7 " I held her feet in my hands. "

― Geoff Nicholson , Footsucker

8 " You have demons?"
"Yes."
That answer didn't surprise me, although how these demons connected with the movie was anybody's guess.
"Volkswagen demons," he said.
"You have Volkswagen demons?"
"Yes. There. I said it. Happy now? "

― Geoff Nicholson , Gravity's Volkswagen

9 " But perhaps the real reason we keep writing is the hope naïve perhaps that we’ll make a better job of it next time. Unless you’re a genius or a fool you realize that everything you write however “successful ” is always a sort of failure. And so you try again. "

― Geoff Nicholson

10 " Words inscribe a text in the same way that a walk inscribes space. Writing is one way of making the world our own, and . . . walking is another. "

― Geoff Nicholson

11 " The best walk is where you get lost then return."

this reminds me of all the random hikes i take that make my soul happy and days when i was little that mom would take us out for sunday drives with the purpose of getting lost just because the adventure was fun (i still enjoy this...) love my mom. thanks, linda :) "

― Geoff Nicholson