Writing was in my mind from the time I was in high school, but more, the idea that I would be a doctor. I really wanted to be a medical doctor, and I had various schemes: one was to be a psychiatrist, another was tropical medicine.

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

Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.

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

Tourists don't know where they've been, travelers don't know where they're going.

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.'

You define a good flight by negatives: you didn't get hijacked, you didn't crash, you didn't throw up, you weren't late, you weren't nauseated by the food. So you are grateful.

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

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.

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.