A person who is tired of London is not necessarily tired of life; it might be that he just can’t find a parking place.

It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.

The measure of civilized behavior is compassion.

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.

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.

Everyone had an opinion and no one had a solution.

My greatest inspiration is memory.