There are two worlds: the world of the tourist and the world of everyone else. Often they're side by side. But the tourist doesn't actually see how people live.

Unless there is a strong sense of place there is no travel writing, but it need not come from topographical description; dialogue can also convey a sense of place. Even so, I insist, the traveler invents the place. Feeling compelled to comment on my travel books, people say to me, "I went there"---China, India, the Pacific, Albania-- "and it wasn't like that." I say, "Because I am not you.

... the grand tour is just the inspired man's way of heading home.

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.

Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with existence or the exotic. It is almost always an inner experience.

People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction.

The lust of the eye. The best photographs were, to me, like an experience of drowning.