I think people like me are in a relatively privileged position because we have to some extent chosen to live in foreign places. I would always make the distinction between those who are exiles in terms of being thrown out of the place they want to be, and others who are exiles in terms of going toward a place they would rather be.

Living here in California, I think one of the scariest things about California is the fact that it is rewriting its script and changing constantly and so many people don't know who they will be and who they will be with a year from now.

For centuries, Cubas greatest resource has been its people.

We travel, in essence, to become young fools again - to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.

All good trips are, like love, about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder.

Traveling is a way to reverse time, to a small extent, and make a day last a year - or at least forty-five hours - and traveling is an easy way of surrounding ourselves, as in childhood, with what we cannot understand.

I exult in the fact I can see everywhere with a flexible eye; the very notion of home is foreign to me, as the state of foreignness is the closest thing I know to home.