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.

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.

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.

One does have to learn to travel with a degree of humility and that reflected in writing and personality.

Your uniqueness is your greatest strength, not how well you emulate others.

Make ethical choices in what we buy, do, and watch. In a consumer-driven society our individual choices, used collectively for the good of animals and nature, can change the world faster than laws.

Give me honorable enemies rather than ambitious ones, and I'll sleep more easily by night.

Love and romance are things worth waiting for.

I just do whatever I do, and put it out there without tryin to cater to anybody. If you like it, you like it.

Nobody appropriates novelties as readily as the Portuguese.

I'm not ready to get married, but I have a pretty great family and I'd like that too, someday.

The Goddess does not shower her gifts on those who reject them.

Allocating budgets will not suffice. We need to make focused efforts at developing the tribal belt of Gujarat

Merrily, merrily goes the bark On a breeze from the northward free, So shoots through the morning sky the lark, Or the swan through the summer sea.