Death is an endless night so awful to contemplate that it can make us love life and value it with such passion that it may be the ultimate cause of all joy and all art.

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.

And woman should stand beside man as the comrade of his soul, not the servant of his body.

Books are in the mind, Grandfather Alessandro said. Too many books and you forget your body is in the world.

I hate American simplicity. I glory in the piling up of complications of every sort. If I could pronounce the name James in any different or more elaborate way I should be in favour of doing it.

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.

True love doesn't have a happy ending, because true love never ends. Letting go is one way of saying I love you.

If horse racing is the sport of kings, then drag racing must be the sport of queens.

If you were the poor, suffering was your currency.

Finding a really good weblog is like finding the peanuts in a box of Cracker Jacks. They are in there, but you have to hunt for them. And when you find one, you savor it.

I wanted to hear my own whispers in the next room and know that I was thinking of me.

Tis well when we dare not do a thing we think is not good and fair; but not so well when we think a thing not good and fair because we dare not do it.