Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in.

Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.

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

The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.

I never stay with people and I never look people up when I travel. I depend more on just chance meetings. The advantage is that people don't know who I am. I meet people casually and they're not doing me a big favor because I'm going to write something.

Travel is at its most rewarding when it ceases to be about your reaching a destination and becomes indistinguishable from living your life

Most travel, and certainly the rewarding kind, involves depending on the kindness of strangers, putting yourself into the hands of people you don't know and trusting them with your life.