"Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will-whatever we may think"
About this Quote
Durrell treats travel less like an itinerary and more like a temperament. By yoking "journeys" to "artists", he steals the prestige we give creativity and hands it to chance: the trip that matters is the one that happens to you, not the one you engineer. The line "born and not made" is doing double duty. It flatters the romance of spontaneity while quietly insulting the managerial fantasy that experience can be designed, optimized, and controlled.
The subtext is a gentle rebuke to modern self-authorship. Durrell’s phrasing turns the will into a kind of unreliable narrator: "whatever we may think" lands like a raised eyebrow, acknowledging how invested we are in believing we chose the decisive moments of our lives. He isn’t denying agency so much as demoting it. A "thousand differing circumstances" suggests that what shapes a journey is usually the unglamorous stuff: missed connections, weather, money, illness, an overheard conversation, the friend of a friend who changes your route. The cumulative weight of those contingencies becomes the real composer.
Context matters because Durrell’s work - especially his Mediterranean writing and the Alexandria Quartet - is obsessed with place as a force that rewrites character. For him, cities aren’t backdrops; they’re co-authors. This quote folds that worldview into a compact credo: travel isn’t a consumer product, it’s an encounter with complexity. The point isn’t to surrender to randomness, but to respect how little of any meaningful passage is "willed" into being.
The subtext is a gentle rebuke to modern self-authorship. Durrell’s phrasing turns the will into a kind of unreliable narrator: "whatever we may think" lands like a raised eyebrow, acknowledging how invested we are in believing we chose the decisive moments of our lives. He isn’t denying agency so much as demoting it. A "thousand differing circumstances" suggests that what shapes a journey is usually the unglamorous stuff: missed connections, weather, money, illness, an overheard conversation, the friend of a friend who changes your route. The cumulative weight of those contingencies becomes the real composer.
Context matters because Durrell’s work - especially his Mediterranean writing and the Alexandria Quartet - is obsessed with place as a force that rewrites character. For him, cities aren’t backdrops; they’re co-authors. This quote folds that worldview into a compact credo: travel isn’t a consumer product, it’s an encounter with complexity. The point isn’t to surrender to randomness, but to respect how little of any meaningful passage is "willed" into being.
Quote Details
| Topic | Journey |
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