Literary thought of the day

I came across this passage yesterday in a novel I'm reading and it grabbed me...

"He talked of Les Cosmopolites and the literary scene in France before the war, of their obsession with foreign travel... the almost sexual thrill of being out of your own country: an outsider, déraciné, worldly, nomadic."

Intriguing, isn't it? I never quite thought of it like that, but I like the description. I felt a bit more glamorous today, just running errands on Bahnhofstrasse and thinking of it. The book, by the way, is Any Human Heart by English writer William Boyd.