When I'm writing, I like to travel alone. If you really want to find out about a place, you need to be as free as possible to be spontaneous. You also need to be lonely, because loneliness is a great teacher, too.

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.

When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there.

There is an intense but simple thrill in setting off in the morning on a mountain trail, knowing that everything you need is on your back. It is a confidence in having left the inessentials behind and of entering a world of natural beauty that has not been violated, where money has no value, and possessions are a dead weight. The person with the fewest possessions is the freest. Thoreau was right.

Travel is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with existence or the exotic. It is almost always an inner experience.

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

The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.