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

“As a general rule of biology, migratory species are less 'aggressive' than sedentary ones.There is one obvious reason why this should be so. The migration itself, like the pilgrimage, is the hard journey: a 'leveller' on which the 'fit' survive and stragglers fall by the wayside.The journey thus pre-empts the need for hierarchies and shows of dominance. The 'dictators' of the animal kingdom are those who live in an ambience of plenty. The anarchists, as always, are the 'gentlemen of the road'.”

“Man's real home is not a house, but the Road, and that life itself is a journey to be walked on foot.”

“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 will go to France, to Yugoslavia, to China and continue my profession.''As sanitary engineer?''No, Monsieur. As adventurer. I will see all the peoples and all the countries in the world.”

“Sometimes, I overheard my aunts discussing these blighted destinies; and Aunt Ruth would hug me, as if to forestall my following in their footsteps. Yet, from the way she lingered over such words as 'Xanadu' or 'Samarkand' or the 'wine-dark sea,' I think she also felt the trouble of the 'wanderer in her soul.”