A guide book is addressed to those who plan to follow the traveler, doing what he has done, but more selectively. A travel book, in its purest, is addressed to those who do not plan to follow the traveler at all, but who require the exotic or comic anomalies, wonders and scandals of the literary form romance which their own place or time cannot entirely supply.

The wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time.

Travel at its truest is thus an ironic experience, and the best travellers . . . seem to be those able to hold two or three inconsistent ideas in their minds at the same time, or able to regard themselves as at once serious persons and clowns.

Anybody who notices unpleasant facts in the have-a-nice-day world we live in is going to be designated a curmudgeon.

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

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.

Anyone telling about his travels must be a liar, . . . for if a traveler doesn't visit his narrative with the spirit and techniques of fiction, no one will want to hear it.