The older I got the more I appreciated the role of travel as a stimulus to memories, and the way in which journeys even to new places were somehow always awakening memories of places seen in an ever-receding past.

The curly red lines across the African deserts had the fascination of a magnet, and I hoped fervently that the pioneers who were writing their names over the blank spaces, would leave just one small desert for me.

I had long ago learned that when you are the giant, alien visitor to a remote and foreign culture it is sort of your job to become an object of ridicule. It’s the least you can do, really, as a polite guest.

To those who are struggling. To talk about a struggle, you're likely to forget about it. To be shown a struggle, you're likely not to forget it. But, to live through a struggle, you'll understand it.

For this I weep all my daysand throughout my lifetime grievethat I swam from my own landsand came from familiar lands    towards these strange doors    to these foreign gates.

...luxury is the enemy of observation, a costly indulgence that induces such a good feeling that you notice nothing. Luxury spoils and infantilizes you and prevents you from knowing the world. That is its purpose...

Ma il coraggio era anche quello. Era la consapevolezza che l'insuccesso fosse comunque il frutto di un tentativo. Che talvolta è meglio perdersi sulla strada di un viaggio impossibile che non partire mai.

My spirit has pass'd in compassion and determination around the whole earth.I have look'd for equals and lovers an found them ready for me in all lands,I think some divine rapport has equalized me with them

I travel to be replenished with beauty, for travel makes the beauty of this world seem like a Christmas that never ends. I travel for the jolting, angelic act of seeking strangeness and newness and profoundness . . .

A journey is a gesture inscribed in space, it vanishes even as it's made. You go from one place to another place, and on to somewhere else again, and already behind you there is no trace that you were ever there.

Half a capital and half a country town, the whole city leads a double existence; it has long trances of the one and flashes of the other; like the king of the Black Isles, it is half alive and half a monumental marble.

Na jaren van zwoegen merken we dat we geen reis maken, maar dat de reis on maakt. Reisleiders, dienstregelingen, reserveringen, star en onvermijdelijk, doen hun uiterste best om de persoonlijkheid van de reis te slopen.

No doubt you are wondering what you will find, out there.' The Commandant said it for me.'Well, it would be useless for me to try and tell you. The desert tells a different story every time one ventures on it...

The difference between travel writing as fiction is the difference between recording what the eye sees and discovering what the imagination knows. Fiction is pure joy - how sad that I could not reinvent the trip as fiction.

I know I am planning to visit a "land" that is not entirely foreign, only foreign to me. As an adventurer, I am on a journey that I believe will last me my whole life. A new relationship, discovery, or awareness excites me.