William Least Heat-Moon
William Least Heat-Moon
William Least Heat-Moon, also named William Lewis Trogdon, is an American travel writer and historian of English, Irish, and Osage ancestry. He is the author of various bestselling books of topographical U.S. travel writing...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth27 August 1939
CountryUnited States of America
ideas migration facts
Spirit can go anywhere. In fact, it has to go places so it can change and emerge like in the migrations. That's the whole idea.
I simply couldn't make it without a copilot.
against funny hold past people
When you're travelling, you are what you are right there and then. People don't have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.
community want firsts
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.
ocean rivers twenties
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.
writing people liberty
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.
rivers personality grandfather
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.
book character writing
It's difficult to write a book where a character is on virtually every page of the book but you cannot refer to his or her gender. It gets rid of every his, her, she and he.
garden eden cost
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.
adventure two kind
There are two kinds of adventurers: those who go truly hoping to find adventure and those who go secretly hoping they won't.
dirty boys world
The hotel was once where things coalesced, where you could meet both townspeople and travelers. Not so in a motel. No matter how you build it, the motel remains the haunt of the quick and dirty, where the only locals are Chamber of Commerce boys every fourth Thursday. Who ever heard the returning traveler exclaim over one of the great motels of the world he stayed in? Motels can be big, but never grand.
lying boredom perception
Boredom lies only with the traveler's limited perception and his failure to explore deeply enough. After a while, I found my perception limited.
adventure ignorance
Adventure is putting one's ignorance into motion.
dream journey voyages
...who can say where a voyage starts - not the the actual passage but the dream of a journey and its urge to find a way?