The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.

Indian enterprises seemed to work so well they produced disasters; success made them burst at the seams and the disruption of unprecedented orders led to shortages and finally failure.

My greatest inspiration is memory.

I'm a tourist, a glorified tourist. I'm not doing it to have a good time or to lie in the sun.

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

A travel book is a book that puts you in the shoes of the traveler, and it's usually a book about having a very bad time, having a miserable time, even better. You don't want to read a book about someone having a great time in the South of France, eating and drinking and falling in love. What you want to read is a book about a guy going through the jungle, going through the arctic snow, having a terrible time trying to cross the Sahara, and solving problems as they go.

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.