All the pathos and irony of leaving one's youth behind is thus implicit in every joyous moment of travel: one knows that the first joy can never be recovered, and the wise traveller learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.

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

Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post facto illumination.

I am working on a book urging the beating to death of baby whales using the dead bodies of baby seals.

Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it.

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

Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice.