I felt sure we could gain the upper hand by putting ourselves in the mindset of the Incas.

A journey, I reflected, is of no merit unless it has tested you.

Contemplation is a luxury, requiring time and alternatives.

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?

Usually, there is nothing more pleasing that returning to a place where you have endured hardship.

In moments of great uncertainty on my travels, I have always felt that something is protecting me, that I will come to no harm.

There's nothing like a pack of mules to give one a sense of entourage.

The first rule of an expedition is that everyone should stick together.

When I am about to embark on a difficult journey, I comfort myself by reading the accounts of the great nineteenth-century travellers, men like Stanley, Burton, Speke, Burckhardt and Barth.

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

Money spent on good-quality gear is always money well spent.

I owe my life to God who set me free from all my sins.

more. To have days cut off and at their end. To never again..........anything.

for whenever men are right they are not young

There is nothing dreary or doubtful about (the life). It is meant to be continually joyful...We are called to a settled happiness in the Lord whose joy is our strength.

Any education that doesn't allow you to think freely is not an education but a prison.

from the slave ship to the citizenship we faced a lot of bullship

Death is a fickle hen, and random are her eggs.

Maturity is when all of your mirrors turn into windows.

I cannot say that our country could have no secret police without becoming totalitarian, but I can say with great conviction that it cannot become totalitarian without a centralized national police.

Today, writing seems to me like an incredible luxury, almost a perversity, something which hardly exists in the world anymore, where you get to see the fruits of your actions in a daily way.