The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug.

American dreams are strongest in the hearts of those who have seen America only in their dreams.

Writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.

The ultimate purpose of Zen,' I remembered the roshi telling me, 'is not in the going away from the world but in the coming back. Zen is not just a matter of gaining enlightenment; it's a matter of acting in a world of love and compassion.

And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it's a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.

Destinations are less important than the spirit you bring to them.

Everyone is a Wordsworth in certain moods, and every traveler seeks out places that every traveler has missed.