“Because they knew each other's thoughts, they even quarrelled without speaking.”

“I haven't got any special religion this morning. My God is the God of Walkers. If you walk hard enough, you probably don't need any other god.”

“I climbed a path and from the top looked up-stream towards Chile. I could see the river, glinting and sliding through the bone-white cliffs with strips of emerald cultivation either side. Away from the cliffs was the desert. There was no sound but the wind, whirring through thorns and whistling through dead grass, and no other sign of life but a hawk, and a black beetle easing over white stones.”

“To lose a passport was the least of one’s worries. To lose a notebook was a catastrophe”

“The real home of man is not his house but the road. Life itself is a travel that has to be done by foot.”

“The usual run of children's books left me cold, and at the age of six I decided to write a book of my own. I managed the first line, 'I am a swallow.' Then I looked up and asked, 'How do you spell telephone wires?”

“I never liked Jules Verne, believing that the real was always more fantastic than the fantastical.”