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Irresistible Bazaars

Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I were on it. Those whistles sing bewitchment: railways are irresistible bazaars …
– Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar

Peshawar to Lahore, Pakistan
Mexico

Life is a train that stops at no stations; you either jump aboard
or stand on the platform and watch as it passes.
– Yasmina Khadra

Kyoto, Japan

The train is a small world moving through a larger world.
– 
Elisha Cooper, Train

Bangladesh
Bangladesh

A train is a vehicle that allows residence:
dinner in the diner, nothing could be finer…
– Paul Theroux, The Great Railway Bazaar

Decca to Peshawar, India

Be like a train; go in the rain, go in the sun, go in the storm,
go in the dark tunnels! Be like a train; concentrate on your road
and go with no hesitation!
– Mehmet Murat Ildan

New York, New York, USA

Railway terminals are our gates to the glorious and the unknown.
Through them, we pass out into adventure and sunshine,
to them, alas! we return.
– E. M. Forster

Yangon, Myanmar

There’s something about the sound of a train that’s
very romantic and nostalgic and hopeful.
– Paul Simon

Dacca to Peshawar, Chittagong, Bangladesh
Myanmar

The only way of catching a train I have ever discovered
is to miss the train before.
– G.K. Chesterton

Dacca to Peshawar, India

Missing a train is only painful if you run after it!
– Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Rangoon, Burma
Colombo, Sri Lanka

Many times the wrong train took me to the right place.
– Paulo Coelho

Dacca to Peshawar, West Bengal, India
Calcutta, West Bengal, India

My heart is warm with the friends I make,
And better friends I’ll not be knowing,
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
No matter where it’s going.
–  Edna St. Vincent Millay, The Selected Poetry

Dacca to Peshawar, Agra, India
Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India
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Grace and Grit

 Stronger by weakness, wiser men become
As they draw near to their eternal home.
Leaving the old, both worlds at once they view
That stand upon the threshold of the new.
– Edmund Waller

Karelia, Russia
Brazil

When we’re young we have faith in what is seen, but when we’re old we know that what is seen is traced in air and built on water.
– Maxwell Anderson

 Lebanon
Zagreb, Croatia
Vrindavan, Uttar Pradesh, India

The great secret that all old people share is that you really
haven’t changed in 70 or 80 years. 

Your body changes, but you don’t change at all.
– Doris Lessing

South Korea
Lourdes, France

Grow old along with me.  The best is yet to be. 
– Robert Browning

Paris, France

It takes a long time to become young.
–  Pablo Picasso

India

The longer I live the more beautiful life becomes. 
–  Frank Lloyd Wright

USA/Mexico Border

 Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.
– Mark Twain, Following the Equator

Venice, Italy

Those who love deeply never grow old;
they may die of old age, but they die young.
– Dorothy Canfield Fisher

Kashmir

Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries
for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who
have used him well;
making them old men and women inexorably
enough, but leaving their
hearts and spirits young and in full vigour.

With such people the grey head is but the impression of the
old fellow’s hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but
a
notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life.
–  Charles Dickens

Karelia, Russia

When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
with a red hat that doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
and satin candles, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired
and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
and run my stick along the public railings
and make up for the sobriety of my youth…
– Jenny Joseph

Lhasa, Tibet

Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.
– Garson Kanin

Yugoslavia

Old age has a great sense of calm and freedom.
-Plato

Kosovo

The answer to old age is to keep one’s mind busy
and to go on with one’s life as if it were interminable.
I always admired Chekhov for building a new house when he was
dying of tuberculosis.

– Leon Edel

Belgrade, Serbia
Shanghai, China

A man’s age is something impressive, it sums up his life:
maturity reached slowly and
against many obstacles, illnesses cured, griefs and despairs overcome, and unconscious risks taken; maturity formed
through so many desires, hopes, regrets,
forgotten things, loves.
A man’s age represents a fine cargo of experiences and memories. 

– Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wartime Writings 1939-1944, translated from French by Norah Purcell 

Yemen

Old age has its pleasures, which, though different,
are not less than the pleasures of youth.
– W. Somerset Maugham

 

STEVE McCURRY, A LIFE IN PICTURES, by Bonnie McCurry, will be published in November, 2018.