I still keep a suitcase in Berlin. — David Bowie

I still keep a suitcase in Berlin.

Author: David Bowie

Insight: There's something quietly rebellious about keeping a suitcase packed in a city you don't live in anymore. It's not about practicality—it's a declaration that you're not done with a place, that some part of your life remains unresolved there, waiting. Bowie said this about Berlin, a city that clearly marked him, changed him. The suitcase is both literal and metaphorical: a refusal to fully close the door, to declare yourself "finished" with somewhere that shaped who you became. Most of us understand this feeling even if we don't live nomadic lives. We keep that one friendship on life support even though we've drifted. We maintain the "what if" about a career path we didn't take, a city we almost moved to, a version of ourselves we nearly became. Keeping the suitcase is about honoring that possibility, that alternate timeline where you stayed or went back or became someone slightly different. What's interesting is that this isn't about nostalgia or being stuck in the past. It's actually about refusing to be fully settled, about maintaining curiosity and openness. It's saying: I contain multitudes, and some of them still live elsewhere. In a world that pressures us to commit, to choose, to finalize—to put down roots and stop looking around—there's real freedom in keeping one suitcase perpetually packed.

Source: David Bowie: A Life, Dylan Jones, p. 356, 2017