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

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

Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with existence or the exotic. It is almost always an inner experience.

I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better.

Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.

"Connected" is the triumphal cry these days. Connection has made people arrogant, impatient, hasty, and presumptuous... I don't doubt that instant communication has been good for business, even for the publishing business, but it has done nothing for literature, and might even have harmed it. In many ways connection has been disastrous. We have confused information (of which there is too much) with ideas (of which there are too few). I found out much more about the world and myself by being unconnected.

All travel is circular. I had been jerked through Asia, making a parabola on one of the planet's hemispheres. After all, the grand tour is just the inspired man's way of heading home.