Critics? Don't talk to me of critics! You think some jackanapes journalist, his soul eaten away by the maggots of jealousy and failure, has anything …

- Jonathan Raban

Life, as the most ancient of all metaphors insists, is a journey; and the travel book, in its deceptive simulation of the journey's fits and starts, …

- Jonathan Raban

The mythical America?that marvellous, heroic, sentimental landwas an object of faith. It challenged you to make the believer's leap over the rude fac…

- Jonathan Raban

Living in cities is an art, and we need the vocabulary of art, of style, to describe the peculiar relationship between man and material that exists i…

- Jonathan Raban

Travel. It was an intransitive verb. It didn't involve any destinations. It was going to the going's sake, to be anywhere but where you were, with mo…

- Jonathan Raban

We need – more urgently than architectural utopias, ingenious traffic disposal systems, or ecological programmes – to comprehend the nature of citize…

- Jonathan Raban

At night, what you see is a city, because all you see is lights. By day, it doesn't look like a city at all. The trees out-number the houses. And tha…

- Jonathan Raban

It always seems to me odd to call a place a wilderness when every wilderness area in the US bristles with rules and regulations as to how you can beh…

- Jonathan Raban

Interstate highways dull the reality of place and distance almost as effectively as jetliners do: I loathe their scary monotony.

- Jonathan Raban