I have dipped into Ian McEwan and so on. I tend not to stick with one writer. But I dip in here and there.

Originally I wanted to be a diplomat, and by attrition I started giving up that idea.

In both places [Paraguay and Newfoundland] people rise despite everything - both are pretty tough environments.

There are 60 million of us [britains] crammed into an area the size of a state. So you don't have that feeling of remoteness at all, ever. And that's reflected in the way our media works, and so on.

I tend to prefer traveling in the Third World countries. Like Ethiopia. Or Eritrea.

Paraguay has had a U.S. supermarket boss as its ambassador for a while. He did the job well. He was there because he wanted to be there. Rather than the British diplomat who didn't want to be there.

I don't want to pay good money to hear ordinary people's lunatic views. Most of the people who phone in are [lunatics] - certainly in Britain.

This terrible frustration that we so often feel in the West in not being able to articulate and express ourselves.

I feel better off doing what I know how to do. I feel a strong element of fictional style in travel writing anyway. Some call it creative nonfiction.

I was talking to my publisher in Britain and was told here we are - we are sixty million people and we reckon only four hundred thousand people in Britain really read.

I find the public reaction to writing - it's fascinating in this modern age. Of course people are able to interact with me and email me, and I get quite a few I suppose.

Unless one says goodbye to what one loves and unless one travels to completely new territories one can expect merely a long wearing away of oneself.

The simplest questions are the hardest to answer.

A compliment is a gift not to be thrown away carelessly unless you want to hurt the giver.

For those with the purity to see it, a nursing mother is one of the most precious, most beautiful, and most holy of all possible images of woman.

Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of women is responsible for prostitution.

In Buddhist practice a great deal of time is spent practicing mandala meditation. You learn to visualize and hold simultaneous concepts in the mind during meditation.

In the numbing hands of pretentious filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen, history does not repeat itself in any way whatsoever.

It's really a full-time job to manage our lives.

I do not like sports, unless you consider treating all humankind with love and respect a sport.

The greatest foe to art is luxury, art cannot live in its atmosphere.