You may not know it but I'm no good at coping with all the attention in the luxury hotels I sometimes find myself in.

Now and then in travel, something unexpected happens that transforms the whole nature of the trip and stays with the traveler.

Someone who seems doddery is perhaps not doddery at all but only an older person absorbed in squinting concentration, as though on an ultimate trip, memorizing a scene, grateful for being alive to see it.

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

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.

Airplanes have dulled and desensitized us; we are encumbered, like lovers in a suit of armor.

"Connected" is the triumphal cry these days. Connection has made people arrogant, impatient, hasty, and presumptuous... I don't doubt that instant communication has been good for business, even for the publishing business, but it has done nothing for literature, and might even have harmed it. In many ways connection has been disastrous. We have confused information (of which there is too much) with ideas (of which there are too few). I found out much more about the world and myself by being unconnected.