I'm a big fan of the vigor of civil society, political engagement, and public life in many parts of Latin America.

People rescue each other. They build shelters and community kitchens and ways to deal with lost children and eventually rebuild one way or another.

I roam around a lot in my territory, but what I learn at one end inflects and opens up my understanding at the other.

A restlessness has seized hold of many of us, a sense that we should be doing something else, no matter what we are doing, or doing at least two things at once, or going to check some other medium. It's an anxiety about keeping up, about not being left out or getting behind.

[In mountaineering, if] we look for private experience rather than public history, even getting to the top becomes an optional narrative rather than the main point, and those who only wander in high places become part of the story.

There are infinite shades of grey. Writing often appears so black and white.

Many people nowadays live in a series of interiors...disconnected from each other. On foot everything stays connected, for while walking one occupies the spaces between those interiors in the same way one occupies those interiors. One lives in the whole world rather than in interiors built up against it.