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

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

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.

You can't want to be a writer. You have to be one.

Pain does not create a long-lasting memory, but the memory of luxury exerts itself for ever.

It is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is over certain of his plot.

Although I'm not fluent in sign language by a long way, I could have a fairly decent conversation.