Occupation: Film Writer Birth: April 10, 1941
It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled..
The conversation, like many others I had with people on trains, derived an easy candour from the shared journey, the comfort of the dining car, and t….
You define a good flight by negatives: you didn't get hijacked, you didn't crash, you didn't throw up, you weren't late, you weren't nauseated by the….
Fiction gives us a second chance that life denies us..
Someone who seems doddery is perhaps not doddery at all but only an older person absorbed in squinting concentration, as though on an ultimate trip, ….
Travel is about failure or overcoming obstacles, overcoming failures. When a traveler is having lots of good luck, that is not a happy book. That's a….
Animal lovers often tend to be misanthropes or loners, and so they transfer their affection to the creature in their control..
You can't write about a friend, you can only write about a former friend..
Notice how many of the Olympic athletes effusively thanked their mothers for their success? “She drove me to my practice at four in the morning,” etc….
Albania in 1994 was the strangest place I've ever seen. It was like walking into the looking glass: falling apart, paranoid people, anarchy, no one f….
It might be said that a great unstated reason for travel is to find places that exemplify where one has been happiest. Looking for idealised versions….
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..
Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves..
There is no faster way of destroying a man, or mocking his ideas, than making him fashionable..
You can't save the rhinos and you can't preserve a culture. I'm very pessimistic. Once it's gone, it's over..
People who don't read books a lot are threatened by books..
There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think….
Winter is a season of recovery and preparation..
Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter..
One thing about cold weather: it brings out the statistician in everyone..
When you travel you realize how small you are. You need to be humble. You can't be a big, brash American. You think you have problems. You leave the ….