I don't want to be the honored guest. I want to be the invisible person.

The worst thing that can happen to you in travel is having a gun pointed at you by a very young person. That's happened to me maybe four times in my life. I didn't like it.

When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.

I think I understand passion. Love is something else.

The greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace.

Someone who seems doddery is perhaps not doddery at all but only an older person absorbed in squinting concentration, as though on an ultimate trip, memorizing a scene, grateful for being alive to see it.

People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction.