poverty denotes a lack of necessities and simplicity a lack of needs.

On my tenth birthday a bicycle and an atlas coincided as presents and a few days later I decided to cycle to India.

There are two phases of enjoyment in journeying through an unknown country - the eager phase of wondering interest in every detail, and the relaxed phase when one feels no longer an observer of the exotic, but a participator in the rhythm of daily life.

[On Addis Ababa:] Among the city's handicaps are an immaturity for which no one can be blamed, as it was founded only eighty years ago, and a proliferation of architectural excesses for which many people can and should be blamed.

... I know a number of Western children who would benefit greatly if only someone were primitive enough to inhibit the development of their personalities.

The Irish have a flair for wringing from death the last drop of emotion and they do not quite understand those who react otherwise.

With our mad lust for Uniformity and a Higher Standard of Living and Expanding Markets, we go to a country like Afghanistan and cruelly try to jerk her forward two thousand years in two decades, giving no thought to the profound shock this must be to her national psychology.