Those who fought know a secret about themselves, and it is not very nice..

Exploration belongs to the Renaissance, travel to the bourgeois age, tourism to our proletarian moment..

The worst thing about war was the sitting around and wondering what you were doing morally..

If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces..

So many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past.So many dreams lost in the madness that had engulfed us.Except for a few widely scattered s….

Travel at its truest is thus an ironic experience, and the best travellers . . . seem to be those able to hold two or three inconsistent ideas in the….

The more violent the body contact of the sports you watch, the lower the class..

A guide book is addressed to those who plan to follow the traveler, doing what he has done, but more selectively. A travel book, in its purest, is ad….

The wise traveler learns not to repeat successes but tries new places all the time..

Americans are the only people in the world known to me whose status anxiety prompts them to advertise their college and university affiliations in th….

The simple is carefully shunned by those who labour to seem what they would be..

What someone doesn't want you to publish is journalism; all else is publicity..

Travelers learn not just foreign customs and curious cuisines and unfamiliar beliefs and novel forms of government. They learn, if they are lucky, hu….

Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power a….

Most people who seek attention and regard by announcing that they're writing a novel are actually so devoid of narrative talent that they can't hold ….

Understanding the past requires pretending that you don't know the present. It requires feeling its own pressure on your pulses without any ex post f….

I find nothing more depressing than optimism..

Travel sharpens the senses. Abroad one feels, sees and hears things in an abnormal way..

The past is not the present: pretending it is corrupts art and thus both rots the mind and shrivels the imagination and conscience..

If we do not redefine manhood, war is inevitable..

If the guidebook used to be critical, today it seems largely a celebratory adjunct to the publicity operations of hotels, resorts, and even countries..