To lose a passport was the least of one’s worries. To lose a notebook was a catastrophe.

A Sufi manual, the Kashf-al-Mahjub, says that, towards the end of his journey, the dervish becomes the Way not the wayfarer, i.e. a place over which something is passing, not a traveller following his own free will.

To lose a passport was the least of one’s worries. To lose a notebook was a catastrophe.

I pictured a low timber house with a shingled roof, caulked against storms, with blazing log fires inside and the walls lined with all the best books, somewhere to live when the rest of the world blew up.

For life is a journey through a wilderness

I never liked Jules Verne, believing that the real was always more fantastic than the fantastical.

Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot.