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

the sudden violent dispossession accompanying a refugee flight is much more than the loss of a permanent home and a traditional occupation, or than the parting from close friends and familiar places. It is also the death of the person one has become in a particular context, and every refugee must be his or her own midwife at the painful process of rebirth.

Undoubtedly the Afghans must be, by our standards, the best-looking people in the world. They have everything; height, proportions, carriage, features and complexion.

... strong bonds are forged in high emotional temperatures.

one of the advantages of cycling is that it automatically prevents a journey from becoming an Expedition.

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

perhaps there is something more than courtesy behind the dissembling reticence of childhood. ... Most artists dislike having their incomplete work considered and discussed and this analogy, I think, is valid. The child is incomplete, too, and is constantly experimenting as he seeks his own style of thought and feeling.