Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.

A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.

Travel is at its most rewarding when it ceases to be about your reaching a destination and becomes indistinguishable from living your life

Is there any point in going across the world to eat something or buy something or watch people squatting among their ruins? Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with distance or the exotic. It is almost entirely an inner experience.

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

For years I felt that being respectable meant maintaining a sinister complacency, and the disreputable freedom I sought helped make me a writer.

You can't save the rhinos and you can't preserve a culture. I'm very pessimistic. Once it's gone, it's over.