The biggest surprise was that a country like Angola, that has so much money, that produces so much oil, would be in such a mess and so difficult to travel in. Something is almost cursed in striking oil. It's like the lottery winner who ends up broke.

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.

The difference between travel writing as fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows. Fiction is pure joy - how sad that I could not reinvent the trip as fiction.

In Turkey it was always 1952, in Malaysia 1937; Afghanistan was 1910 and Bolivia 1949. It is 20 years ago in the Soviet Union, 10 in Norway, five in France. It is always last year in Australia and next week in Japan.

An island is a fixed and finite piece of geography, and usually the whole place has been carved up and claimed.

You can't want to be a writer. You have to be one.

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