Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there.
I have written stories, essays, even whole books on trains, scribble-scribble.
People see a hungry face, and they want to feed it; that's a natural response.
Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in.
They say that if the Swiss had designed these mountains they'd be rather flatter.
Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.
He regarded himself as an accomplished writer — a clear sign of madness in anyone.
Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter.
Writing ... is practically the only activity a person can do that is not competitive.
The lust of the eye. The best photographs were, to me, like an experience of drowning.
The Japanese have perfected good manners and made them indistinguishable from rudeness.
Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing.
Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of geography to oblivion.
I think that love isn't what you think it is when you're in your twenties or even thirties.
Nothing to me is so erotic as a hotel room, and therefore so penetrated with life and death.
I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read.
Pain does not create a long-lasting memory, but the memory of luxury exerts itself for ever.
You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.
There has to be a measure of difficulty or problem-solving in travel for it to be worthwhile.
Airplanes have dulled and desensitized us; we are encumbered, like lovers in a suit of armor.
There is no faster way of destroying a man, or mocking his ideas, than making him fashionable.
I'm a tourist, a glorified tourist. I'm not doing it to have a good time or to lie in the sun.
What I find is that you can do almost anything or go almost anywhere, if you're not in a hurry.
I don't think that it's possible to have a truly rewarding experience in travel if it's simple.
The job of the travel writer is to go far and wide, to make voluminous notes, to tell the truth.
All politicians, even the most idealistic ones, are looking for money, sucking up to rich people.
Although I'm not fluent in sign language by a long way, I could have a fairly decent conversation.
The Trans-Siberian Express is like a cruise across an oceanic landscape. I've done it three times.
There's books that are about places we will never go, and then there's books that inspire us to go.
People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction.
My house is a place I have spent many years improving to the point where I have no desire to leave it.
In countries where all the crooked politicians wear pin-striped suits, the best people are bare-assed.
I always found myself in the company of Australians, who were like a reminder that I'd touched bottom.
Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Graham Greene - they influenced my life to a profound extent.
To me, writing is a considered act. It's something which is a great labor of thought and consideration.
And that is all anyone can do, try to be honest about what he feels, what he's seen or thinks he's seen.
A place that doesn't welcome tourists, that's really difficult and off the map, is a place I want to see.
Bogotá seemed a cruel towering place, like an eagles' nest now inhabited by vultures and their dying prey.
I loathe blogs when I look at them. Blogs look, to me, illiterate. They look hasty, like someone babbling.
I think there is only one way to write fiction - alone, in a room, without interruption or any distraction.
Loneliness in travel directs you and tells you about yourself. You don't become lonely unless you're alone.
You can't save the rhinos and you can't preserve a culture. I'm very pessimistic. Once it's gone, it's over.
Tightfisted people are as mean with friendship as they are with cash--suspicious, unbelieving, and incurious.
The long morning shadows lay as still and dark as lakes and patterned the rough ground with straight margins.
Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind.
An island is a fixed and finite piece of geography, and usually the whole place has been carved up and claimed.
You must not judge people by their country. In South America, it is always wise to judge people by their altitude.
What strikes me about high-school reunions is the realization that these are people one has known one's whole life.
A gun show is about like-minded people who feel as if everything has been taken away from them - jobs, money, pride.
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.