I'm not pessimistic about Africa. The cities just seem big and hopeless. But there's still a great green heart where there's possibility. There's hope in the wilderness.

Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves.

Bogotá seemed a cruel towering place, like an eagles' nest now inhabited by vultures and their dying prey.

There has to be a measure of difficulty or problem-solving in travel for it to be worthwhile.

No one has ever described the place where I have just arrived: this is the emotion that makes me want to travel. It is one of the greatest reasons to go anywhere.

Is there any point in going across the world to eat something or buy something or watch people squatting among their ruins? Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with distance or the exotic. It is almost entirely an inner experience.

Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us.