Clipped Clippings, Kindling Kindle... Don't go there

I bought a Kindle a couple of weeks ago. I have become a book reading fiend.
As an only child, I used to sit for hours reading and reading and reading... My room was piled high with books and I loved having a collection that I could read over and over again.
I stopped reading once I started racing. I don't know why. I didn't have the patience to sit and not think. My mind was constantly racing just like my job was.
Now that we have no choice but to be with ourselves, my Kindle is the best thing I've discovered. I've started reading again and finding out that my mind can race within a book again.
In particular, 2 books by author Adam Fletcher. "Don't Go There' and 'Don't Come Back'. These books have resonated with me massively, more than any other book has before. My thoughts about myself and travel have become almost obsessional over the past week.
It was due to these books that I found my blog again. I wished I had written all my thoughts and experiences down too.... and then realised today, that I had. I actually can't believe that I forgot.
Anyone who knows me well, will know that I have an interest in unusual things. Taking photographs of strangers possessions abandoned years ago, finding wartime buildings with memories left inside, having the desire to visit countries other people may choose not to acknowledge. (My ticket to Krakow got cancelled last month... but I'll be visiting Auschwitz as soon as I am allowed).
I've visited Cambodia, Berlin, Belgium, France, Wales.... and when asked what I did there, I haven't been able to name any tourist attractions... because I'm too busy in the middle of nowhere looking for the lost and forgotten. Except for Spaghetti Ice Cream in Germany of course....

I'm still in the process of working out why I like these places. Is it because I am lost? Why am I so intrigued to find out more about unusual events in history? What is this morbid fascination? Why do I photograph broken things?

Anyway, I found some interesting quotes I resonated with along my Kindling journey and thought I'd post them here:

"It’s easy to believe you made all the important decisions in your existence—where you live, whom you date, the job you do, your friends. Yet under closer scrutiny, isn’t it obvious only the small decisions, the A or B choices, are yours? The big things—class, personality, intelligence, appearance—the things that decide how good options A and B will be, they’re cards dealt at birth in a game you must play."
Don''t Come Back - Adam Fletcher

"Interculturality and travel are the best chances to stop that process; to challenge ourselves and our prejudices; to remain open, young, and relevant. To not think that our way is the right way, the normal way, the default way, and that everyone else—in funny, foreign places—is wrong and weird. If we do that, stay that open and flexible, we’ll never forget . . .” I paused, even though half the room could have finished the sentence for me. “How to fly.”"

Don''t Come Back - Adam Fletcher

"I reminded myself that this was the destination. The cave wouldn’t matter, would fade from my memory an hour after we’d left it. It was only the people, the stories, the journey, the uncertainty, and the potential of the next moment that counted. The destination was just the place you went last."
Don''t Come Back - Adam Fletcher

"I thought about how weird a human quirk it is that we consider whatever is exotic or mostly unachievable beautiful. So while we Europeans are heading out to the tanning salon to get darker skin and sweating our way round laps of the park to lose weight, there are Asian people covering their faces to keep their complexions white while the citizens of Ghana double down on fried chicken to try to stay un-trim. We just love to make it hard for ourselves. We are, in many ways, quite ridiculous..."
Don't Go There - Adam Fletcher

"That was what travel was for. The unfamiliarity of being where you don’t belong frees you from any expectations about how things there are supposed to work, and, in turn, how you will react to them."
Don't Go There - Adam Fletcher

"But life doesn’t wait till we are ready. More often than not, it throws us into the deep end and asks us to swim."
The Child of Auschwitz - Lily Graham

"But I have seen what people can do – what they can conquer, what they can survive – if they only will it so."

The Child of Auschwitz - Lily Graham