Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist but rather a novelist who travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.

Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace.

The greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace.

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

I always found myself in the company of Australians, who were like a reminder that I'd touched bottom.

The biggest surprise was that a country like Angola, that has so much money, that produces so much oil, would be in such a mess and so difficult to travel in. Something is almost cursed in striking oil. It's like the lottery winner who ends up broke.

I think that love isn't what you think it is when you're in your twenties or even thirties.