Early youth is a baffling time. The present moment is nice but it does not last. Living in it is like waiting in a junction town for the morning limited; the junction may be interesting...

Writers do not have the privilege of sleep. There is always a story coming alive in their heads, constantly composing. Whether they choose it or not.

The restlessness and the longing, like the longing that is in the whistle of a faraway train. Except that the longing isn’t really in the whistle—it is in you.

When we are in love, we are convinced nobody else will do. But as time goes, others do do, and often do do, much much better.

I miss your silent stature, your avoided days of disaster, your present state of distress.I’m cinnamon, cloves and fire, you are the rested cedarwood of desire.

In America, Fredericka, they don’t really have trains for people. The trains here are used mainly to transport pigs, television sets, and fruit.

I remember when your name was just another name that rolled without thought off my tongue.Now, I can’t look at your name without an abundance of sentiment attached to each lettter.Your name, which I played...

Now he slept soundly through the nights, and often he dreamed of trains, and often of one particular train: He was on it; he could smell the coal smoke; a world went by. And then...

Suicide by train is also popular in many developed countries. Without ready access to firearms, suicidal people often turn to trains. —Der Spiegel, July 27, 2011Once it happens you can’t rememberhow you started out: innocent,barreling...

I’m mistaken….for thinking you were someone with a heart worth breaking.

The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs. This was March, but the weather had been horribly...

This is Denmark. We are Danes. We keep our distance. We do not pick a seat close to strangers if other seats are available. We do not talk to strangers in the trains.”William Wilson in...

Maybe she had it wrong all this time and her empty heart could never be filled by his ingenious broken spirit. Maybe this yearning had nothing to do with him, and everything to do with...

I’ve always felt that distant train whistles heard in the dead of night are the universe’s way of letting us know the best days are neither ahead nor behind us…they’re happening right now, cradled in...

Trains are beautiful. They take people to places they’ve never been, faster than they could ever go themselves. Everyone who works on trains knows they have personalities, they’re like people. They have their own mysteries.

You don’t deserve my image in your head. You don’t deserve my memories in your chest.

What is it about me that gets them all crying? It’s not the end of the world.

Like the waters of the river, like the motorists on the highway, and like the yellow trains streaking down the Santa Fe tracks, drama, in the shape of exceptional happenings, had never stopped there.

You’re a mess, I confess, I despise you in the best kind of way.

The rage for railroads is so great that many will be laid in parts where they will not pay.

Tell me, Blaise, are we very far from Montmartre?’WorriesForget your worriesAll the stations full of cracks tilted along the wayThe telegraph wires they hang fromThe grimacing poles that gesticulate and strangle themThe world stretches lengthens...

Do you remember the long orphanage of the train stationsWe crossed cities that turn-tabled all dayAnd vomited at night the sunshine of the day (“The Voyager”)

It’s a finger snapping kind of day.

I lie down on many a station platform; I stand before many a soup kitchen; I squat on many a bench;–then at last the landscape becomes disturbing, mysterious, and familiar. It glides past the western...

I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going.

I woke up feeling alone, so lonely. The night before, I had cried myself to sleep. I lay there on the floor, listening to the tube trains passing beneath me. I thought, All those hundreds...

He had let me know time after time that he was a thinking man, a man of intellect and wit. Yet one unintended hungry look into my eyes and he betrayed each of his words...

We’d seen it a million times before, since girls on the Tracks rarely knew of loyalty. She’d be gone when the breeze got under her skin. “You can’t trust Vagabond hearts. They are already so...

It’s not getting from A to B. It’s not the beginning or the destination that counts. It’s the ride in between…This train is alive with things that should be seen and heard. It’s a living,...

I won’t let you have it. I won’t give you this moment. I won’t let you fill up this valuable organ…I own it. I won’t do it. I can’t think, I won’t think about it.

Trains induce such terrible anxiety. They image the possibility of total and irrevocable failure. They are also dirty, rackety, packed with strangers, an object lesson in the foul contingency of life: the talkative fellow-traveller, the...

It’s been my experience that most folk who ride trains could care less where they’re going. For them it’s the journey itself and the people they meet along the way. You see, at every stop...

He offered her power, money, status…a giant prison, all in exchange for only…her soul.

There’s a hair in my food! Well, I did order all the cuddles I can eat. A buffet of sleep is how I describe my love to strangers on trains.