What I find is that you can do almost anything or go almost anywhere, if you're not in a hurry.

It is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is over certain of his plot.

People write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble, they write about having to wait for a bus. They write about waiting. They write three pages about how long it took them to get a visa. I'm not interested in the boring parts. Everyone has tummy trouble. Everyone waits in line. I don't want to hear about it.

Most travel, and certainly the rewarding kind, involves depending on the kindness of strangers, putting yourself into the hands of people you don't know and trusting them with your life.

Reading liberates you. You could know about the world through reading.

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.

I'm a tourist, a glorified tourist. I'm not doing it to have a good time or to lie in the sun.