Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies.

Reading is also a journey. It's a process of discovery.

The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.

A national crisis, a political convulsion, is an opportunity, a gift to the traveler. Nothing is more revealing of a place to a stranger than trouble. Even if a crisis is incomprehensible, as it usually is, it lends drama to the day and transforms the traveler into an eye witness.

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

For years I felt that being respectable meant maintaining a sinister complacency, and the disreputable freedom I sought helped make me a writer.

A person who is tired of London is not necessarily tired of life; it might be that he just can’t find a parking place.