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

travel [is] flight and pursuit in equal parts.

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.

They say that if the Swiss had designed these mountains they'd be rather flatter.

My love for traveling to islands amounts to a pathological condition known as nesomania, an obsession with islands. This craze seems reasonable to me, because islands are small self-contained worlds that can help us understand larger ones.

Ever since childhood, when I lived within earshot of the Boston and Maine, I have seldom heard a train go by and not wished I was on it.

Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation.