“Through a strange kind of geographic arrogance, Europeans like to think that the world was a silent, dark, unknown place until they trooped out and discovered it.”

“The backstreet cafe in Casablanca was for me a place of mystery, a place with a soul, a place with danger. There was a sense that the safety nets had been cut away, that each citizen walked upon the high wire of this, the real world. I longed not merely to travel through it, but to live in such a city.”

“Searching for a lost city is a particularly European obsession.”

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

“There comes a stage at which a man would rather die cleanly by a bullet than by the unknown terror of the phantom in the forest.”

“In Morocco," said Osman, "word spreads like a fire tearing through the depths of Hell.”

“I struggled to think pure thoughts, as Hector sucked out my psyche with his eyes.”