Whoever designed this frigging map was having a laugh. Just around the corner, my arse.

If we are strong, and have faith in life and its richness of surprises, and hold the rudder steadily in our hands. I am sure we will sail into quiet and pleasant waters for our old age.

not wholly consciously, but not quite unconsciously, as far as I can remember, I determined to fashion my future as a sculptor his marble, and there was in it the same mixture of foresight and the unknown. The thing in the mind of the artist takes its way and imposes its form as it wakens under his hand. And so with life.

The true call of the desert, of the mountains, or the sea, is their silence - free of the networks of dead speech.

The portion we see of human beings is very small: their formats and faces, voices and words.... beyond these, like an immense dark continent, lies all that has made them.

The tourist travels in his own atmosphere like a snail in his shell and stands, as it were, on his own perambulating doorstep to look at the continents of the world. But if you discard all this, and sally forth with a leisurely and blank mind, there is no knowing what may not happen to you.

I dislike being an anvil for the hammering out of other people's virtues.