“I believe that Marrakech ought to be earned as a destination. The journey is the preparation for the experience. Reaching it too fast derides it, makes it a little less easy to understand.”

“You have no idea. when you're a salesman here in Marrakech medima, lying is the first thing you learn. generation after generation, they pass it on. its the secret ingredient the foundationfor a salesman's success. lie well and you make a fortune every day. your wife purrs like a kitten, and your children ealk tall with pride.”

“Previous journeys had taught me the danger of taking too much stuff.”

“[T]hrough bitter experience I have learned that it is best to promise little and then to reward hard work with generosity.”

“Most journeys have a clear beginning, but on some the ending is less well-defined. The question is, at what point do you bite your lip and head for home?”

“As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.”

“The Occident has never found it easy to grasp the strange netherworld of spirits that followers of Islam universally believe exist in a realm overlaid our own.”