Tourists who go to Africa have more of a traditional experience than Africans do. A tourist goes on safari; Africans don't.

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

Going slowly [...] was the best way of being reminded that there is a relationship between Here and There, and that travel narrative was the story of There and Back.

The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.

The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity.

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.

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.