The man who is tired of London is tired of looking for a parking space

Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.

Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.

The difference between travel writing as fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows. Fiction is pure joy - how sad that I could not reinvent the trip as fiction.

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.

Home is always the impossible subject, multilayered and maddening.