One of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.

I don't think that it's possible to have a truly rewarding experience in travel if it's simple.

There is an intense but simple thrill in setting off in the morning on a mountain trail, knowing that everything you need is on your back. It is a confidence in having left the inessentials behind and of entering a world of natural beauty that has not been violated, where money has no value, and possessions are a dead weight. The person with the fewest possessions is the freest. Thoreau was right.

I greatly enjoyed Tom Reiss's The Orientalist, for its mingled scholarship and sleuthing, and for so elegantly solving the puzzle of one of the Twentieth Century's most mysterious writers.

Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing.

It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled.

Sightseeing was ... based on imaginative invention, like rehearsing your own play in stage sets from which all the actors had fled.