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Travels
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Travels (1989) (edit title/settings)

by Michael Crichton (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am. When Michael Crichton -- a Harvard-trained physician, bestselling novelist, and successful movie director -- began to feel isolated in his own life, he decided to widen his horizons. He tracked wild... read more

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “Many years passed, andn I had long since left medicine, before I arrived at a view of disease that seemed to make sense to me. The view is this:We cause our diseases. We are directly responsible for any illness that happens to us....whether we can see a mechanism or not-whether there is a mechanism or not-it is healthier to assume responsibility for our lives, and for everything that happens to us.Of course it isn't helpful to blame ourselves for an illness. ... But that doesn't mean we should abdicate all responsibility as well. To give up responsibility for our lives is not healthy....I believe we are more likely to recover if we take that responsibility....when we take responsibility for a situation, we also take control of it. We are less frightened and more practical....I have to decide. It's my life. It's my responsibility.pg. 60”
    Michael Crichton
  • “We all can work ourselves into a hysterical panic over possibilities that we won't look at. What if I have cancer? What if my job is at risk? What if my kids are on drugs? What if I'm getting bald? What if an elephant is outside my tent?What if I am faced with some terrible thing that I don't know how to deal with? And that hysteria always goes away the instant we are willing to hear the answer. Even if the answer is what we feared all along. Yes, you cancer. Yes, your kids are on drugs. Yes, there is an elephant outside your tent. Now, the question becomes, What are you going to do about it? Subsequent emotions may not be pleasant, but the hysteria stops. Hysteria accompanies an unwillingness to look at what is really going on; it promotes an unwillingness to look. We feel we are afraid to look, when actually it is not-looking that makes us afraid. The minute we look, we cease being afraid.pg. 148”
    Michael Crichton
  • “The closer one looks at history, the less coherent it becomes. From a distance, from the chapter headings of a textbook, history looks very tidy indeed. But on a closer inspection it all breaks down. The Dark Ages weren't dark; it is hard to be sure what the Middle Ages stood in the middle of; the Renaissance is as much a birth as a rebirth. Anyway, these headings only apply to European history, a small fragment of world history. Things were different in other parts of the globe, and in other cultural traditions.For the most part, the constructions we make of our own past are invisible to us. The interpretations themselves become real.pg. 172”
    Michael Crichton
  • “The internal psychological pressure to make up a story, to explain the ruins before one's eyes, is powerful indeed. That was the shock that I felt atop the Pyramid of the Magician, as I watched the morning sun spread across the face of the ancient city. Soon enough I, too, clutched my guidebook and walked through the ruins of Uxmal, pretending that I understood far more than I did.pg. 172”
    Michael Crichton
  • “I hadn't traveled with the intention of learning about anything except myself. And the real point of all this travel was not what I had come to believe or disbelieve about the wider world, but what I had learned about myself. When I look back on my travels, I see an almost obsessive desire for experiences that would increase my self-awareness. I needed new experiences to keep shaking myself up. I don't know why this should be true for me. ...the search for new experiences represents an appetite. It's an acquired taste, in my case acquired early. From my parents, I learned to perceive new experiences as fun and invigorating, and not as frightening.pg 347”
    Michael Crichton
  • “I see my travels as a strategy for solving problems in my life. Whenever things got bad, whenever my life really wasn't working, I'd get on a plane and go far away.. Not to escape my problems so much as to get perspective on them. I found that this strategy worked. I returned to my life with a new sense of balance. pg. 347”
    Michael Crichton
  • “My own sense is that the acquisition of self-knowledge has been made more difficult by the modern world. More and more human beings live in vast urban environments, surrounded by other human beings and the creations of human beings. The natural world, the traditional source of self-awareness, is increasingly absent.pg. 347”
    Michael Crichton
  • “Unaccustomed to direct experience, we can come to fear it. ...I found I liked travel, because it got me out of my routines and my familiar patterns. The more traveling I did, the more organized I became.pg 350”
    Michael Crichton
  • “Before long traveling became a lot less fun, because now I was staggering onto airplanes, loaded down with all this stuff that I felt I had to take with me. I had made a new routine instead of escaping the old one. ...So one day I decided I would get on the plane and carry nothing at all. Nothing to entertain me, nothing to save me from boredom. I stepped on the plane in a state of panic--none of my familiar stuff! What was I going to do?It turned out I had a fine time. I read the magazines that were on the plane. I talked to people. I stared out the window. I thought about things.It turned out I didn't need any of that stuff I thought I needed. In fact, I felt a lot more alive without it. pg 351”
    Michael Crichton
  • “That's the difficulty with making theories. The original observation wasn't wrong--but the conclusion drawn was wrong. <regarding the scotch tape at Claridge's hotel upon a subsequent visist<\>pg 351”
    Michael Crichton
  • “I've come to take a rather simple-minded view of all this. There's a natural human resistance to change. We all fall into patterns and habits that eventually constrict our lives, but which we have difficulty breaking anyway. Rilke described the problem in this simple way:Whoever you are: some evening take a stepout of your house, which you know so well.Enormous space is near...”
    Michael Crichton
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First Sentence edit see section history

It is not easy to cut through a human head with a hacksaw.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Preface

I. Medical Days
1. Cadaver
2. A Good Story
3. The Gourd Ward
4. The Girl Who Seduced Everybody
5. A Day at BLI
6. Lousy on Admission
7. Heart Attack!
8. Drs. W, X, Y, and Z
9. Quitting Medicine

II. Travels
1. Sex and Death in L.A.
2. Psychiatry
3. Bangkok
4. Bonaire
5. Pahang
6. An Elephant Attacks
7. Kilimanjaro
8. Pyramid of the Magician
9. My Father's Death
10. Ireland
11. London Psychics
12. Baltistan
13. Shangri-La
14. Sharks
15. Gorillas
16. An Extinct Turtle
17. Cactus Teachings
18. Jamaica
19. A Human Light Show
20. They
21. Seeing Headhunters
22. Life on the Astral Plane
23. New Guinea
24. Spoon Bending
25. Seeing Auras
26. An Entity
27. Direct Experience

Postscript: Skeptics at Cal Tech

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Michael Crichton (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Perennial
Country: United States
Publication Date: 1989
ISBN: 0060509058
Page Count: 400

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PS3553.R48 Z476 2002
  • Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

Contains language not appropriate for children.

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