My greatest inspiration is memory..

An island is a fixed and finite piece of geography, and usually the whole place has been carved up and claimed..

Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter..

Home is always the impossible subject, multilayered and maddening..

There are two worlds: the world of the tourist and the world of everyone else. Often they're side by side. But the tourist doesn't actually see how p….

In countries where all the crooked politicians wear pin-striped suits, the best people are bare-assed..

The people of Hong Kong are criticized for only being interested in business, but it's the only thing they've been allowed to do..

When I write about my childhood I think, oh my God, how did I ever get from there to here? Not that any great thing has happened to me. But I felt so….

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….

The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume..

I grew up in an era of thinking of travel as escape. The idea that you could conceivably have a new life, go somewhere, fall in love, have little chi….

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 ….

Pain does not create a long-lasting memory, but the memory of luxury exerts itself for ever..

The difference between travel writing as fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows. Fi….

The monotony of staying in one place is the best thing for writing a novel. Having regular habits, a kind of security, but especially no big surprise….

Travel is glamorous only in retrospect..

Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist but rather a novelist who tr….

The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness..

Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind..

Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of geography to oblivion..

It is usually expensive and lonely to be principled..