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

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" Friendship is also about liking a person for their failings, their weakness. It's also about mutual help, not about exploitation. "

" I have written stories, essays, even whole books on trains, scribble-scribble. "

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

" Japan, Germany, and India seem to me to have serious writers, readers, and book buyers, but the Netherlands has struck me as the most robust literary culture in the world. "

" Nyasaland was the perfect country for a volunteer. It was friendly and destitute; it was small and out-of-the-way. It had all of Africa's problems - poverty, ignorance, disease. "

" I think I am typical in believing that the Peace Corps trained us brilliantly and then did little more except send us into the bush. It was not a bad way of running things. "

" 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. "

" When I went to Hong Kong, I knew at once I wanted to write a story set there. "

" I have always felt that the truth is prophetic, and that if you describe precisely what you see and give it life with your imagination, then what you write ought to have lasting value, no matter what the mood of your prose. "

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

" 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. "

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

" I think people read travel books either because they intend to take that trip, or because they would never take that trip. In a sense, as a writer you are doing the travel for the reader. "

" One of my fears is not writing. I don't know how to do anything else. "

" I can't predict how reading habits will change. But I will say that the greatest loss is the paper archive - no more a great stack of manuscripts, letters, and notebooks from a writer's life, but only a tiny pile of disks, little plastic cookies where once were calligraphic marvels. "

" The more you write, the more you're capable of writing. "

" 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. "

" I think that love isn't what you think it is when you're in your twenties or even thirties. "

" 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. "

" The Trans-Siberian Express is like a cruise across an oceanic landscape. I've done it three times. "

" 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. "

" Travel magazines are just one cupcake after another. They're not about travel. The travel magazine is, in fact, about the opposite of travel. It's about having a nice time on a honeymoon, or whatever. "

" I do not want to be young again. "

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" The people of Hong Kong are criticized for only being interested in business, but it's the only thing they've been allowed to do. "

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

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

" People see a hungry face, and they want to feed it; that's a natural response. "