Sightseeing was ... based on imaginative invention, like rehearsing your own play in stage sets from which all the actors had fled.

Airplanes have dulled and desensitized us; we are encumbered, like lovers in a suit of armor.

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.

Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing.

A national crisis, a political convulsion, is an opportunity, a gift to the traveler. Nothing is more revealing of a place to a stranger than trouble. Even if a crisis is incomprehensible, as it usually is, it lends drama to the day and transforms the traveler into an eye witness.

There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment.

Reading is also a journey. It's a process of discovery.