Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood.

For me, nature is something you watch on the Discovery Channel, or on the evening news -- as you learn how much more of it's been savaged to make way for the Blackberry realm that is my home

As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.

For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure.

Move to a new country and you quickly see that visiting a place as a tourist, and actually moving there for good, are two very different things.

A little imagination goes a long way in Fes.

One senses that, in these conditions, no amount of wet-wiping could bring true hygiene.

The Occident has never found it easy to grasp the strange netherworld of spirits that followers of Islam universally believe exist in a realm overlaid our own.

It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.

Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.

The idea of my heart dancing with delight was far too good to pass up.

Bite me." -Lieutenant Eve Dallas, from any of the In Death books.

Do you need anything?" she asks. A mom A dad. Someone. Anyone. Can you arrange for that? "Nah, I'm good.

It was nothing less than murder, in her eyes

Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.

Fried chicken is my husband's favorite food.

I don't think I'm a star or a celebrity or any thing like that.

There's responsibility, but there's also accountability. You have to be accountable for your actions. You have to stand at your locker when things are going bad.

There is nothing that you can do to me that my own craziness doesn't do to me smarter and faster and better.

I am a blogger - that is an amazing thing for me, because it captures a moment in time every day.

The walking stick serves the purpose of an advertisement that the bearer's hands are employed otherwise than in useful effort, and it therefore has utility as an evidence of leisure.