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" I feel as if my mission is to write, to see, to observe, and I feel lazy if I'm not reaching conclusions. I feel stupid. I feel as if I'm wasting my time. "

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" You need to be on your own so that you can meet people as you are, and as they are. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" It's only when you're alone that you realize where you are. You have nothing to fall back on except your own resources. "

" Gain a modest reputation for being unreliable and you will never be asked to do a thing. "

" What draws me in is that a trip is a leap in the dark. It's like a metaphor for life. You set off from home, and in the classic travel book, you go to an unknown place. You discover a different world, and you discover yourself. "

" People who don't read books a lot are threatened by books. "

" Africa is really a place for the wealthy traveler. It's got some nice hotels, but they're very expensive hotels. It doesn't really cater to the backpacker or to the overland traveler. "

" The Australian Book of Etiquette is a very slim volume. "

" Television cannot film corruption. Television cannot spend five days on a rattling railway train, talking endlessly. Television needs excitement, it needs an angle, it needs a 'sound bite. "

" I think I understand passion. Love is something else. "

" Although I'm not fluent in sign language by a long way, I could have a fairly decent conversation. "

" Fiction gives us the second chances that life denies us. "

" Travel is glamorous only in retrospect. "

" Hawaii is not a state of mind, but a state of grace. "

" I think there is only one way to write fiction - alone, in a room, without interruption or any distraction. "

" Writing is pretty crummy on the nerves. "

" There are places that I've always wanted to go. First I went to Africa, and when I was there I realized there were places in Africa I really to wanted to visit: The Congo, West Africa, Mombassa. I wanted to see the deep, dark, outlandish places. "

" To me, writing is a considered act. It's something which is a great labor of thought and consideration. "

" People write about getting sick, they write about tummy trouble, they write about having to wait for a bus. They write about waiting. They write three pages about how long it took them to get a visa. I'm not interested in the boring parts. Everyone has tummy trouble. Everyone waits in line. I don't want to hear about it. "

" The idea of traveling in Africa for me is based on going by road or train or bus or whatever and crossing borders. You can't travel easily or at all through some countries. "

" Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, Albert Camus, Graham Greene - they influenced my life to a profound extent. "

" Anything is possible on a train: a great meal, a binge, a visit from card players, an intrigue, a good night's sleep, and strangers' monologues framed like Russian short stories. "

" Extensive traveling induces a feeling of encapsulation, and travel, so broadening at first, contracts the mind. "

" The pleasure a reader gets is often equal to the pleasure a writer is given. "

" I'm constantly running across people who have never heard of books I think they should read. "

" There are two worlds: the world of the tourist and the world of everyone else. Often they're side by side. But the tourist doesn't actually see how people live. "

" Love doesn't last. "

" I have spent my life on the road waking in a pleasant, or not so pleasant hotel, and setting off every morning after breakfast hoping to discover something new and repeatable, something worth writing about. "

" You can't separate the people from the places - although I sometimes like traveling in places where there are no people. "