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

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?

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

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

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.

Justice is about making them pay for [her] pain. Revenge is making them pay for yours.

Whatever good I have accomplished as an actress I believe came in direct proportion to my efforts to portray black women who have made positive contributions to my heritage.

It seemed incredible to me, that physical courage should be so commonplace and revered, while moral courage . . . is so rare and despised.

One of my secret instructions to myself as a poet is "Whatever you do, don't be boring."

Ideas are invented only as correctives to the past. Through repeated rectification of this kind one may hope to disengage an idea that is valid.

My fellow Minnesotans join me in mourning the loss of America's 40th President and celebrating the life of a man who personified both the greatness and goodness of America.

You can pay attention to the fact, in which case you'll probably become a mathematician, or you can ignore it, in which case you'll probably become a physicist.

I know a lot about women and their suffering, but I still know almost nothing about men.

All true knowledge contradicts common sense.

Life's passed along to us empty. We have to make up the happiness part.