Sometimes people read a book in order to not go on a trip. You read a book instead of going on the trip. And so the travel writer is doing the traveling for you.

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

The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.

Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation.

Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc. Writing is not figure skating or skiing. Your mother will not make you a writer. My advice to any young person who wants to write is: leave home.

Tibet has a very proud people but it's culturally gone and overrun ever since the Chinese took over. It's like saving the rhino. When a species is endangered, it's gone.

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