Explorers like to pretend that they are a select breed of people with iron nerve and an ability to endure terrible hardship.

For me, nature is something you watch on the Discovery Channel, or on the evening news -- as you learn how much more of it's been savaged to make way for the Blackberry realm that is my home

As a travel writer I've specialized in gritty, fearful destinations, the kind of places that make a reader's hair stick on end.

Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood.

For me, a journey to Damascus is an amazing hunt from beginning to end, a slice through layers of history in search of treasure.

Move to a new country and you quickly see that visiting a place as a tourist, and actually moving there for good, are two very different things.

A little imagination goes a long way in Fes.

One senses that, in these conditions, no amount of wet-wiping could bring true hygiene.

The Occident has never found it easy to grasp the strange netherworld of spirits that followers of Islam universally believe exist in a realm overlaid our own.

It is almost impossible to overemphasize the importance with which ancestry is held in the Middle East and North Africa.

The idea of my heart dancing with delight was far too good to pass up.

I want him to see the flowers in my eyes and hear the songs in my hands.

My only journey is one within my self...My only path is one through my soul.

There is no economic law that says that everyone, or even most people, automatically benefit from technological progress.

For every man there exists a bait which he cannot resist swallowing.

Why is Scottie Pippen taking a charge? Taking a charge is for people with no game!

Who said I can't wear my Converse With my dress, well baby That's just me!

If you have real, internal value, you don't need a loud, expensive imitation.

These are the sort of things that push you on in music - the curiosity, a passion for new ideas.

Before, if I wasn't in baseball, I wanted to become a doctor.

Wars have ever been but another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing commerce.