It is fatal to know too much at the outcome: boredom comes as quickly to the traveler who knows his route as to the novelist who is over certain of his plot.

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.

You write for the people in high school who ignored you. We all do.

The fluid boundary between individuals and types is a true concern of the real writer.

The more you let yourself go the less others let you go.

You have to prove your success in order to grow.

My tattoos say "Stay strong." "Stay" on one wrist and "strong" on the other. I'm able to look at them and be thankful for being alive.

Therefore one should speak at the same time of national citizenship and wider European citizenship.

There just arent that many Jesus roles around.

Writing stories is the habit of lying put to good use.

I grew up near the sea in British Columbia and San Francisco, and lived in Malibu and Fiji for years. I get uncomfortable being too far inland.

And as to you Death, and you bitter hug of mortality, it is idle to try to alarm me.