I grew up in an era of thinking of travel as escape. The idea that you could conceivably have a new life, go somewhere, fall in love, have little children under the palm trees.

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

It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources.

Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.

Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist but rather a novelist who travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.

The United States is a world unto itself. We have mountains, we have deserts, we have a river that equals the Yangtze River, that equals the Nile. We have the greatest cities in the world - among the greatest cities in the world. We have a large population. We have challenges. We have an indigenous population.

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.