At my lowest point, when things were at their most desperate and uncomfortable, I always found myself in the company of Australians, who were like a reminder that I'd touched bottom.

Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace.

There are probably more annoying things than being hectored about African development by a wealthy Irish rock star in a cowboy hat, but I can't think of one at the moment.

The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume.

I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better.

You go away for a long time and return a different person - you never come all the way back.

You can't save the rhinos and you can't preserve a culture. I'm very pessimistic. Once it's gone, it's over.

All travel is circular. I had been jerked through Asia, making a parabola on one of the planet's hemispheres. After all, the grand tour is just the inspired man's way of heading home.

Travel is an attitude, a state of mind. It is not residence, it is motion.

Railways are irresistible bazaars, snaking along perfectly level no matter what the landscape, improving your mood with speed, and never upsetting your drink.

Tibet has a very proud people but it's culturally gone and overrun ever since the Chinese took over. It's like saving the rhino. When a species is endangered, it's gone.

A prudent man will think more important what fate has conceded to him than what it has denied.

Definition of a classic: a book everyone is assumed to have read and often thinks they have.

I spent the whole evening sitting before a mirror to keep myself company.

A truly free society is based on a vision of respect for people and what they value.

If the work is worthwhile, then whether we can complete it or not, it's worth making the attempt. That's why courage is important.

Nothing is rarer than real goodness.

The reason we have to regulate . . . church schools is that . . . children that are not trained in state-controlled schools will not fit in.

Reality is what we want it to be or what we do not want it to be, but it is not our wanting or our not wanting that makes it so.

The next microsecond, as the water erupted around me, I realized too late that I should've brought the entire Twenty-first Nome to help me.

Have a day off, which is very rare in our line of work, but that's something we like to do. Like I said, it's a nice way to take your mind off the game and just go out and relax and have fun.