So far I had been travelling alone with my handbook and my Western Railway timetable: I was happiest finding my own way and did not require a liaison man. It had been my intention to stay on the train, without bothering about arriving anywhere: sight-seeing was a way of passing the time, but, as I had concluded in Istanbul, it was an activity very largely based on imaginative invention, like rehearsing your own play in stage sets from which all the actors had fled.

I'm not pessimistic about Africa. The cities just seem big and hopeless. But there's still a great green heart where there's possibility. There's hope in the wilderness.

I don't think that it's possible to have a truly rewarding experience in travel if it's simple.

Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter.

He regarded himself as an accomplished writer — a clear sign of madness in anyone.

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

A novel captures essence that is not possible in any other form.