“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 food. So you are grateful.”

“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 point of work, of life, of love.'”

“The Peace Corps is a sort of Howard Johnson's on the main drag into maturity.”

“When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books.”

“A travel book is about someone who goes somewhere, travels on the ground, sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it, and has a hard time, and then comes back and writes about it. It's not about inventing.”

“Travel works best when you're forced to come to terms with the place you're in.”

“Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.”

“The amount of hassle involved in travel can be overwhelming.”

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

“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 food. So you are grateful.”

“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 travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places.”

“Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.”