By now I was utterly deprogrammed. I walked along naked usually, clothes being not only putrid but unnecessary. My skin had been baked a deep terra-cotta brown and was the constituency of harness leather. The sun no longer penetrated it. I retained my hat.

When there is no one to remind you what society's rules are, and there is nothing to keep you linked to that society, you had better be prepared for some startling changes.

I hate hats! Hats just give you really bad hair! I had a hat sometimes. Frankly, you get burnt so much anyway, it's beside the point. And when you're walking into the western sun, no hat in the world is going to save your face and neck from being sizzled.

I just don't see myself as a travel writer. I can't. I don't.

The good Lord in his ultimate wisdom gave us three things to make life bearable: hope, jokes, and dogs, but the greatest of these was dogs.

The most difficult part of any endeavour is taking the first step, making the first decision.

And there are new kinds of nomads, not people who are at home everywhere, but who are at home nowhere. I was one of them