Traveling alone offers the chance to test the limits of what you think you know about yourself.

It's not a crime not to know yourself. It's not a crime to send life away. It's just a shame.

It was beguiling to live in a country, Scotland, that didn't look enough like itself to be a location for its own movies... I remember consulting a film book and discovering that Arthur Freed decided to shoot Brigadoon in Hollywood because nowhere in Scotland looked Scottish enough.

As a writer I care about America, and care about its carelessness.

A good nationalism has to depend on a principle of the common people, on myths of a struggling commonality.

I think I am becoming obsessive-compulsive. David Beckham apparently turns all the Diet Coke cans in his fridge to face the same way every morning, and I nerdily sharpen all the pencils in my pot before sitting down to work.

Always trust strangers, it's the people you know that let you down.