Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends.

Today the Somme is a peaceful but sullen place, unforgetting and unforgiving. ... To wander now over the fields destined to extrude their rusty metal fragments for centuries is to appreciate in the most intimate way the permanent reverberations of July, 1916. When the air is damp you can smell rusted iron everywhere, even though you see only wheat and barley.

Exploration belongs to the Renaissance, travel to the bourgeois age, tourism to our proletarian moment.

Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in the rear window of their automobiles.

Travel sharpens the senses. Abroad one feels, sees and hears things in an abnormal way.

Tourism requires that you see conventional things, and that you see them in a conventional way.

If we do not redefine manhood, war is inevitable.