The greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace.

It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.

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

Winter is a season of recovery and preparation.

For years I felt that being respectable meant maintaining a sinister complacency, and the disreputable freedom I sought helped make me a writer.

A travel book is about someone who goes somewhere, travels on the ground, sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it, and has a hard time, and then comes back and writes about it. It's not about inventing.

I don't think I've ever seen a person having a serious conversation on a cellphone. It's like a kiddie thing, a complete time waster.