If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that, I don't think..

Unless there is a strong sense of place there is no travel writing, but it need not come from topographical description; dialogue can also convey a s….

Travel is at its most rewarding when it ceases to be about your reaching a destination and becomes indistinguishable from living your life.

I don't think that it's possible to have a truly rewarding experience in travel if it's simple..

travel [is] flight and pursuit in equal parts..

Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going..

The amount of hassle involved in travel can be overwhelming..

When I began to make some money, I really wanted to have a home..

You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back..

Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketi….

Reading alters the appearance of a book. Once it has been read, it never looks the same again, and people leave their individual imprint on a book th….

When I'm writing, I like to travel alone. If you really want to find out about a place, you need to be as free as possible to be spontaneous. You als….

Tibet has a very proud people but it's culturally gone and overrun ever since the Chinese took over. It's like saving the rhino. When a species is en….

People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction..

When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for anoth….

The larger an English industry was, the more likely it was to go bankrupt, because the English were not naturally corporate people; they disliked wor….

Bogotá seemed a cruel towering place, like an eagles' nest now inhabited by vultures and their dying prey..

Sometimes people read a book in order to not go on a trip. You read a book instead of going on the trip. And so the travel writer is doing the travel….

I am happy being what I am..

Painters strike me as having warm uncomplicated friendships and probably more natural generosity than the practitioners of any other art. Perhaps thi….

The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity..