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.

Travel is about failure or overcoming obstacles, overcoming failures. When a traveler is having lots of good luck, that is not a happy book. That's a book you say, well, I don't need that. I want a life lesson. I want to find out - I want a journey that reflects my life.

In countries where all the crooked politicians wear pin-striped suits, the best people are bare-assed.

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.

I said I didn't think it would be a collectivist state so much as a wilderness in which most people lived hand to mouth, and the rich would live like princes - better than the rich had ever lived, except that their lives would constantly be in danger from the hungry predatory poor. All the technology would serve the rich, but they would need it for their own protection and to assure their continued prosperity.

I like the idea of isolation, I like the idea of solitude. You can be connected and have a phone and still be lonely.

Tourists who go to Africa have more of a traditional experience than Africans do. A tourist goes on safari; Africans don't.