People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction.

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

The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.

Tibet has a very proud people but it's culturally gone and overrun ever since the Chinese took over. It's like saving the rhino. When a species is endangered, it's gone.

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.

The monotony of staying in one place is the best thing for writing a novel. Having regular habits, a kind of security, but especially no big surprises, no shocks.

It is almost axiomatic that the worst trains take you through magical places.