My love for traveling to islands amounts to a pathological condition known as nesomania, an obsession with islands. This craze seems reasonable to me, because islands are small self-contained worlds that can help us understand larger ones.

Albania in 1994 was the strangest place I've ever seen. It was like walking into the looking glass: falling apart, paranoid people, anarchy, no one farming, full of thieves. It was beyond any Third World country. They were living in their own private nightmare.

They say that if the Swiss had designed these mountains they'd be rather flatter.

You can't want to be a writer. You have to be one.

I don't want to be the honored guest. I want to be the invisible person.

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.

Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.