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

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.

The amount of hassle involved in travel can be overwhelming.

Pain does not create a long-lasting memory, but the memory of luxury exerts itself for ever.

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.

Literary life used to be quite different in Britain in the years I lived there, from 1971 to 1989, because money was not a factor - no one made very much except from U.S. sales and the occasional windfall.

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