Reading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their individual imprint on a book they have read. Once of the pleasures of reading is seeing this alteration on the pages, and the way, by reading it, you have made the book yours.

An island is a fixed and finite piece of geography, and usually the whole place has been carved up and claimed.

Travel is only glamorous in retrospect.

Even if I were traveling with you, your trip would not be mine.

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

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

Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketing, and generally less congenial - but my day is the same: get out of bed, procrastinate, sit down at my desk, try to write something.