“Travel is glamorous only in retrospect.”

“You think of travellers as bold, but our guilty secret is that travel is one of the laziest ways on earth of passing the time.”

“travel [is] flight and pursuit in equal parts.”

“Unless there is a strong sense of place there is no travel writing, but it need not come from topographical description; dialogue can also convey a sense of place. Even so, I insist, the traveler invents the place. Feeling compelled to comment on my travel books, people say to me, "I went there"---China, India, the Pacific, Albania-- "and it wasn't like that." I say, "Because I am not you.”

“The wish to disappear sends many travelers away. If you are thoroughly sick of being kept waiting at home or at work, travel is perfect: let other people wait for a change. Travel is a sort of revenge for having been put on hold, or having to leave messages on answering machines, not knowing your party's extension, being kept waiting all your working life - the homebound writer's irritants. But also being kept waiting is the human conditon.”

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

“Going slowly [...] was the best way of being reminded that there is a relationship between Here and There, and that travel narrative was the story of There and Back.”