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.

A gun show is about like-minded people who feel as if everything has been taken away from them - jobs, money, pride.

The man who is tired of London is tired of looking for a parking space

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.

Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.

Sightseeing was ... based on imaginative invention, like rehearsing your own play in stage sets from which all the actors had fled.

travel [is] flight and pursuit in equal parts.