My pride and identity is wrapped up in my big trips. But I can't always be on one - I need to plan them and fund them, and I want some semblance of a normal life too.

Buy your freedom. Work really hard when you're young, save every penny, make a lot of money, and retire at 40, or 30 if you get lucky.

I'm focused on doing what makes me happiest and on how I can make real improvements and contributions to my immediate niche, i.e. my family, friends, and local community.

I think planning to be a "professional adventurer" is about as realistic as planning to be a basketball player, so I don't usually encourage it.

I would describe myself as a "budding adventurer." I've transitioned away from being a straight-up backpacker, but I think I need another trip or two to get the adventurer degree.

So many horrid Ghosts.

There is nothing I like better at the end of a hot summer's day than taking a short walk around the garden. You can smell the heat coming up from the earth to meet the cooler night air.

My dearly beloved if I am to die today and never see the sweet face of you I want you to know that I am no great man and am lucky to have such a woman as you.

To define it rudely but not inaptly, engineering is the art of doing that well with one dollar which any bungler can do with two after a fashion.

What are you going to do?,' he asked me. Me? Nothing. Something has just been broken inside me; you yourself will never be able to repair it.

Beware of assumptions that seem "obvious" in one decade. They may become quaint in the next.

It's really a drag to sit around when you're old, and think, 'Ah, gee, I never went to France.' Go to France. Life is very short; you've got to pack it all in there.

I was very superstitious when I was a teenager, and I had to fight against that because it made me feel anxious.

I think that the memory of Armenia's genocide opened my eyes at an early age to the existence of political cynicism.

Humans are the only hunters who kill when not hungry.