You can't write about a friend, you can only write about a former friend..

I'm a tourist, a glorified tourist. I'm not doing it to have a good time or to lie in the sun..

The greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace..

You may not know it but I'm no good at coping with all the attention in the luxury hotels I sometimes find myself in..

The moment that changed me for ever was the moment my first child was born. I was happy, filled with hope, and thought, 'Now I understand the whole p….

I don't want to be the honored guest. I want to be the invisible person..

Railways are irresistible bazaars, snaking along perfectly level no matter what the landscape, improving your mood with speed, and never upsetting yo….

The worst thing that can happen to you in travel is having a gun pointed at you by a very young person. That's happened to me maybe four times in my ….

Every country has the writers she requires and deserves, which is why Nicaragua, in two hundred years of literacy, has produced one writer-a mediocre….

Cooking requires confident guesswork and improvisation-- experimentation and substitution, dealing with failure and uncertainty in a creative way.

They say that if the Swiss had designed these mountains they'd be rather flatter..

Truly, the worst trains take one across the best landscapes..

I think most serious and omnivorous readers are alike- intense in their dedication to the word, quiet-minded, but relieved and eagerly talkative when….

When I started writing, I did have some idealised notion of my dad as a writer. But I have less and less of a literary rivalry with him as I've gone ….

Loneliness in travel directs you and tells you about yourself. You don't become lonely unless you're alone..

When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there..

And that is all anyone can do, try to be honest about what he feels, what he's seen or thinks he's seen..

Airplanes have dulled and desensitized us; we are encumbered, like lovers in a suit of armor..

The more you write, the more you're capable of writing..

People who don't read books a lot are threatened by books..

The traveler's boast, sometimes couched as a complaint, is that of having been an eyewitness, and invariably this experience - shocking though it may….