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

For me, nature is something you watch on the Discovery Channel, or on the evening news -- as you learn how much more of it's been savaged to make way for the Blackberry realm that is my home

Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood.

For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure.

Move to a new country and you quickly see that visiting a place as a tourist, and actually moving there for good, are two very different things.

A little imagination goes a long way in Fes.

One senses that, in these conditions, no amount of wet-wiping could bring true hygiene.

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.

It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.

Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.

The idea of my heart dancing with delight was far too good to pass up.

Be glad for the sacred breath.

Treat others like your life depends on it.. because it does.

What I want to get out of my college course is some knowledge of the best way of living life and doing the most and best with it. I want to learn to understand and help other people and myself.

Nothing is enough to the man for whom enough is too little.

If you watched 'Lost,' sometimes the episodes were crazy good and sometimes you're like, "That one was just sorta there."

If my dog wants to know why I didn't feed him this morning, he may want to rethink walking out of the room when I'm telling him a joke.

I like people who can't die in their bed.

You have to have a very strong cash flow for a film to really stay in theaters. You have to have the advertising capacity to sustain and follow the kind of press coverage.

That's absurd," I said with a little laugh. "Nobody can read too much. That's like saying someone breathes too much.

By centering our lives on timeless, unchanging principles, we create a fundamental paradigm of effective living. It is the center that puts all other centers in perspective.