It never stops me from saying what I want to say about Ethiopia, the fact that a tour company is paid for me to go there. Book reviewers don't pay for the books they review.

I don't want to sell other people trips! I want to be there!

I realize how much [Mark] Twain fabricated things. I like it very much, but it's only half true. And it shows what he was trying to do, which was just entertain. Which he does very successfully, though the humor is almost dated now.

My parents don't think about Europe at all. The Continent is somewhere else. And they call it the Continent - to reflect, they are no real part of it.

Lawrence Millman is a favorite writer of mine. He did a travels on the trail of the Vikings.

When McDonald's opened up in Moscow - I happened to be there when it opened and wandered in. And the Russians were queuing three times around the block to get in. And when they got to the head of the queue, they'd go, "I'll have a Big Mac please. Have you the cheese and the rolls? And do you have the meat and do you have the salad?" And everybody asks this because they are so used to things being awful that it took them a quarter of an hour to order a Big Mac.

There is a very big difference between American and British travel journalism, and that's this whole business of the assisted or freebie trip. In Britain we are unashamed about any travel company paying for you to go and then writing about it. That's the only way we can do it. But I have tried the same in the States, and I can't write for any sizeable American newspaper because they tell you to do it on this basis.