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" I believe I have a sunny disposition, and am not naturally a grouch. It takes a lot of optimism, after all, to be a traveler. "

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" The two impulses in travel are to get away from home, and the other is to pursue something - a landscape, people, an exotic place. Certainly finding a place that you like or discovering something unusual is a very sustaining thing in travel. "

" A journey awakens all our old fears of danger and risk. Your life is on the line. You are living by your own resources; you have to find your own way and solve every problem on the road. "

" Because of my capacity for listening to strangers' tales, or the details of their lives, my patience with their food and their crotchets, my curiosity that borders on nosiness, I am told that anyone traveling with me experiences an unbelievable tedium, and this is why I choose to travel alone. "

" A place that doesn't welcome tourists, that's really difficult and off the map, is a place I want to see. "

" Dentists seem to me very orderly, businesslike people who appear to become somewhat bored with the routine of their work after a period of time. Perhaps I'm wrong. "

" I like the idea of isolation, I like the idea of solitude. You can be connected and have a phone and still be lonely. "

" I was raised in a large family. The first reason for my travel was to get away from my family. I knew that I wanted to be a writer, but I didn't want people to ask me questions about it. "

" An island is a fixed and finite piece of geography, and usually the whole place has been carved up and claimed. "

" The place that interests me most, actually, is the United States. I've realized that I haven't traveled much in the States. There's a lot to see. "

" When I write about my childhood I think, oh my God, how did I ever get from there to here? Not that any great thing has happened to me. But I felt so tiny, so lost. "

" A travel book is about someone who goes somewhere, travels on the ground, sees something and spends quite a lot of time doing it, and has a hard time, and then comes back and writes about it. It's not about inventing. "

" Fiction writing, and the reading of it, and book buying, have always been the activities of a tiny minority of people, even in the most-literate societies. "

" When I was in the Peace Corps I never made a phone call. I was in Central Africa; I didn't make a phone call for two years. I was in Uganda for another four years and I didn't make a phone call. So for six years I didn't make a phone call, but I wrote letters, I wrote short stories, I wrote books. "

" The worst thing that can happen to you in travel is having a gun pointed at you by a very young person. That's happened to me maybe four times in my life. I didn't like it. "

" The moment that changed me for ever was the moment my first child was born. I was happy, filled with hope, and thought, 'Now I understand the whole point of work, of life, of love.' "

" I don't look down on tourism. I live in Hawaii where we have 7 million visitors a year. If they weren't there, there would be no economy. So I understand why a tourist economy is necessary. "

" My father had an invisible job outside of the house; I didn't know what he did. But my kids were privy to the ups and downs of a writer's life. "

" I hate vacations. I hate them. I have no fun on them. I get nothing done. People sit and relax, but I don't want to relax. I want to see something. "

" Mark Twain was a great traveler and he wrote three or four great travel books. I wouldn't say that I'm a travel novelist but rather a novelist who travels - and who uses travel as a background for finding stories of places. "

" If you're a misanthrope you stay at home. There are certain writers who really don't like other people. I'm not like that, I don't think. "

" Maine out of season is unmistakably a great destination: hospitable, good-humored, plenty of elbow room, short days, dark nights of crackling ice crystals. "

" Maine is a joy in the summer. But the soul of Maine is more apparent in the winter. "

" I should start by saying that traveling in the States is a bit like traveling in Asia. You need it, it helps to have an introduction - that there is a certain network. "

" Everything is fiction. You only have your own life to work with in the way that a biographer only has the letters and journals to work with. "

" People talk about the pain of writing, but very few people talk about the pleasure and satisfaction. "

" Many aspects of the writing life have changed since I published my first book, in the 1960s. It is more corporate, more driven by profits and marketing, and generally less congenial - but my day is the same: get out of bed, procrastinate, sit down at my desk, try to write something. "

" I was kind of raised with the suggestion that I had a duty to do; that life was real, life was earnest. And I hated that, actually. I needed to be liberated, to be told that I could live the life that I wanted to live; that I didn't need a job, or to be shouted at; that I could be myself; that I could be happy. "

" I cannot make my days longer so I strive to make them better. "

" Men in their late 50s often make very bad decisions. "

" I don't think I've ever seen a person having a serious conversation on a cellphone. It's like a kiddie thing, a complete time waster. "